


tacet

by estora



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Disability, Episode: s03e08 McKay and Mrs. Miller, Episode: s03e09 Phantoms, M/M, Major Character Injury, Muteness, PTSD, Permanent Injury, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-07-30 23:31:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20105422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estora/pseuds/estora
Summary: You shot me, McKay tries to say, and in another world where Sheppard was holding something clumsy like a P90 in one hand and the bullet only grazed McKay’s side, Sheppard might replyYes, Rodney, I shot you and I said I was sorry!It might even be kind of funny. You shot me, McKay wants to say, and all he can taste is blood.





	1. sonata: exposition

**Author's Note:**

> HEY WHAT'S UP I'm only a decade late to this fandom, rip me. This takes the Season 3 episodes "McKay and Mrs Miller" and "Phantoms" and flips the order as if "Phantoms" happens first and also was a lot worse for McKay. I hurt him because I love him. Hope you enjoy part one (of three)!

McKay wonders, later, why he raised his hands.

Before Atlantis, before the expedition, McKay spent several weeks reading about mortal injuries; specifically, how to survive them. It made sense, really – he was going to an entirely new galaxy with a trigger-happy team, would probably find himself in a few (ha!) dangerous situations, might even be mortally wounded; so it payed to be prepared, to know what to expect in case he got stabbed or burned or shot. For instance: most people who get shot don’t even realise they’ve been shot until later. Plenty of reports say that they just feel like they’ve been punched and don’t realise until they see the blood or pass out. McKay spent several weeks grilling Carson about survival rates of taking a bullet in the leg or the arm, or the chest. What if it’s here, just above the heart? What’s the survival rate? What about the statistical likelihood of survival if he gets shot under the ribcage? And so on until Carson lost patience and snapped that if McKay didn’t stop asking him then Carson would shoot him himself and he could run his own bloody statistical analysis of chances of survival.

Medical ‘science’ is guesswork at best, voodoo at worst, but there are still mathematical parameters and variables one can apply to certain situations. Sometimes it depends on physics; how far away the shooter is, what the calibre of the bullet is, what the angle of the shot is. Other times it depends on a variable as flaky as biology: platelet count, heartrate, shock, grace under pressure.

That last one in particular is a bitch.

If McKay had had the slightest bit of sense about him, if he’d had a modicum of grace (seriously, where’s that Samantha Carter hallucination when he needs it?) he could have been able to duck, or roll out of the way, or realise sooner that Sheppard was aiming his gun at him. But all he’d been able to do was flinch and throw his hands up, as if his hands were somehow going to stop the bullet. Instincts: bad.

Here are the hard physics variables:

  1. Sheppard is barely three metres away from McKay.
  2. Sheppard is armed with a Beretta 92FS.
  3. The angle of the bullet is almost a perfect 180o from Sheppard’s wrist to McKay’s throat.

Here are the flaky biological variables:

  1. McKay is borderline hypoglycaemic.
  2. McKay is panicking so hard that his heartrate is at 184 BPM.
  3. McKay pisses himself when he goes down.

Carson tells him later, in a soft, sad voice that McKay hates with every fibre of his being, that it was the flinch that saved his life: the twist of his head to the side, the cringe when he raised his hands that drew him out of the path of Sheppard’s bullet just enough for it to miss his carotid artery, instead slicing through his larynx and voice box. That conversation comes later and when it does, it feels a little like déjà vu; but now, lying in the dirt, covered in his own piss and choking on his own blood, he thinks: those reports were bullshit. He knows he’s been shot, and it fucking _hurts_. Doesn’t feel anything like a punch. He’s been punched before; usually because he’s pissed a co-worker off. Kolya slapped him. Were those worse? They’d seemed bad at the time. That knife in his arm was like fire and metal twisting his skin open until the words came spilling out and that had barely been a nick. That was nothing compared to this. Aren’t people supposed to pass out from the pain? Maybe if he passes out he doesn’t haven’t to go insane with the visceral horror of holding his own throat together with his slippery blood-slicked fingers.

If he’s completely honest, he’s more upset about wetting himself than anything else. That seems like a strange priority, considering what else is going on, but the stench of urine is pungent and his pants are cold and wet and uncomfortable. If he survives – oh. If. If he survives. Here’s a scenario McKay never got Carson to run him through: the chances of survival when you’ve been shot through the throat. Obviously the carotid arteries haven’t been damaged otherwise he’d already be dead, so instead of quickly bleeding out he’s slowly bleeding out, which he’s pretty sure is worse. Do you drown in your own blood first? Do you suffocate? Is it the blood loss that kills you? How much blood can fill your lungs before revival is impossible? He thinks he hears Teyla’s voice in the background; thinks he feels Ronon’s hand on his shoulder. They’re both talking to him but the words don’t make sense; all he knows is that Sheppard shot him in the throat and if he takes his hands away he’ll die.

Anyway, if he survives, no one will ever let him forget that he pissed himself.

“He’s going into shock,” Carson says, or at least McKay thinks he says it – it’s hard to tell. If it’s true, then – well, that’s another stupid biological variable to add to the list, because that’s what the reports don’t tell you: that often, it’s the shock that kills a gunshot victim, not the bullet itself. How fucked up is that? Your own body turning against you because there isn’t enough blood circulating the body. Pale, cold clammy skin, difficulty breathing (is he still breathing? How can he be breathing when his throat is shredded under his fingers? He supposes he must be, somehow, because if he’s not breathing he should be dead, he should be _dead_), anxiety, heart palpitations, nausea, vomiting, oh god don’t let him vomit, he hopes he doesn’t vomit, how fucked up would that be, vomiting into his own throat wound?

“Rodney, just hold on,” Sheppard chokes from somewhere above him or behind him or below him, he doesn’t know because the world is spinning and there are hands on him, tugging his fingers away from his neck and black throbs around the edges of his vision. “Oh, god, Rodney – Rodney, I –”

_You shot me_, McKay tries to say, and in another world where Sheppard was holding something clumsy like a P90 in one hand and the bullet only grazed McKay’s side, Sheppard might reply _Yes, Rodney, I shot you and I said I was sorry! _It might even be kind of funny. _You shot me_, McKay wants to say, and all he can taste is blood.

* * *

Afterwards – after he wakes up a week later in the infirmary, after the tracheotomy is removed to let him breathe on his own, after Carson tells him in that soft sad voice that he survived because the bullet only nicked his larynx (oh, _only_), after he has to be sedated because of a panic attack, after he wakes up again – McKay is told three things:

  1. He will almost (key word) make a full recovery.
  2. He will never speak again.

He doesn't actually know what the third thing is because McKay stops listening after the second thing. Carson’s Scottish murmurings become white noise, filling his ears like the words are cotton wool. He gets sedated again – apparently, he tried to throw his food tray at Carson but he doesn’t remember that – and when he wakes up, Teyla and Ronon are there tell him more things.

First Teyla hugs him. That’s nice. She’s also recovering from a gunshot wound, but unlike McKay she will make a full recovery, no ‘almost’ about it. Ronon reaches over to squeeze his shoulder with a grim sympathy that makes McKay want to curl up against him or slap his hand away. Sheppard shot Ronon too, but not in the goddamn throat. Why couldn’t it have been Ronon who was shot in the throat? He barely talks as it is; no one would have known the difference. Unlike Ronon, McKay _needs_ his voice; it’s the third most important thing to him, behind his mind and his hands respectively. Not that McKay believes for a moment he’s permanently mute – medical science is hardly science, after all, so who is Carson to say that McKay’s voice is gone for good? Carson has forbidden him from his duties but that’s fine because sending a message to Radek to bring him his laptop isn’t work, it’s for personal reasons, like downloading voice training exercises.

It’s not until Elizabeth visits him and takes his hand, twining her fingers through his, that that nausea he was worried about when he was lying in the dirt in his own blood and piss hits him between his ribs.

“Oh, Rodney,” she whispers, holding his hand. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

There are so many things he wants to say to her. _It’s not John’s fault_ is on the tip of his tongue but when he tries he chokes. _I’ll be back on duty in no time_ is also there. Maybe if he thinks it hard and loud enough, she’ll understand. _I’m going to get my voice back_, is what he also wants to say, but he looks down at their hands, looks at her exhausted face, looks at the tears gleaming in her eyes, and realises that she doesn’t believe she’ll ever hear his voice again.

Carson gave him a whiteboard and marker. No point in learning sign language, McKay thinks. No one on Atlantis knows it fluently enough to communicate meaningfully, and besides, he won’t need it when he gets his voice back. He uses his free hand to write _JOHN?_ on the board, the tip of the marker squeaking on the surface. The marker is almost dry; he’d spent the last few sleepless nights trapped in the infirmary scrawling out equations for Radek to increase shielding on the jumpers by 7.3% – not, McKay thinks bitterly, that that had lifted his spirits at all, because Radek had taken one look at the equations, took off his glasses and pinched his brow and started to weep.

“Thank you, Rodney,” Radek had sniffled when he was quite finished humiliating himself, and took a picture of the equations on the board and basically fled; another doubter who thinks he’ll never hear McKay’s voice again. Or maybe he’d been worried McKay had been brain-damaged – either way, not exactly a confidence booster.

It’s a little flattering, in a way. McKay has spent his whole life being told by others that he talks too much, that he’s too loud, that his voice is annoying, that he’ll get punched in the mouth if he doesn’t shut up. Now that he can’t talk – temporarily, it’s only temporary – everyone misses his words. It’s a sad day when McKay the eternal pessimist (he prefers the term ‘realist’) is the only one who knows he’ll speak again.

All that aside: since waking the third time, McKay knows exactly three things about Sheppard’s status:

  1. Sheppard has removed himself from active duty and put Major Lorne in charge instead.
  2. Sheppard spent the entire week while McKay was in a coma at his bedside.
  3. Sheppard has not come to visit McKay since McKay woke up.

Talk about _rude_.

Elizabeth takes the board and gazes at John’s name followed by a question mark, and sighs. “He’s been asking for updates on you,” she says, using her diplomat’s voice. “Every few hours, to make sure you’re recovering.”

McKay sneers and snatches the board back, wiping it clear with the sleeve of his gown. Carson hates it when McKay does that. The stains don’t come out easily in the wash.

_He shot me_, the marker squeaks on the board. _The least he could do is come to apologise to me in person!_

The corner of Elizabeth’s mouth twitches. “I’ll be sure to pass that along.”

* * *

It becomes a game of who’s going to be braver: Sheppard for visiting the friend he shot through the throat because a Wraith mind manipulation machine made him hallucinate enemies; or McKay, for looking in the mirror to assess the damage.

He’s gotten used to the bandages but Carson (some friend _he_ is) keep reminding him that they’ll have to come off eventually. McKay wonders if he can get away with wearing turtlenecks for the rest of his life. Probably not; those have never been a good look for him, emphasising his double-chin and erasing what little throat definition he had to start with. But does he really want to walk around with a scarred mess on his throat on full display? Maybe if it was from something really noble, like if he’d been caught in an explosion while singlehandedly saving the entire city, instead of being shot by his hallucinating best friend. Anyway, it’s not _just_ the scar from the bullet – there’s also the scar from where Carson had sliced open his trachea, below the gunshot wound across his larynx, on M1B-129 to stop McKay from choking on his own blood, which became the hole where the tracheotomy tube was inserted when they got him back to Atlantis. Apparently he’d been conscious during that, but Heightmeyer tells him that the trauma has either repressed or erased the memory of the scalpel in his throat. Small mercies.

So long story short, no, he doesn’t want to walk around with the scars on display, but equally, there aren’t enough pros to justify the turtleneck. Turtlenecks are uncomfortable; he always feels like he’s been gently throttled by a short person, and he’s not sure he can handle any sort of pressure on his throat because unfortunately, he _does_ remember waking up the first time and choking on the tracheotomy tube until Carson pulled it out.

Heightmeyer also tells him the nightmares he’s been having where he wakes up gasping and choking for air is PTSD. No shit Sherlock, he wants to sneer at her; of course it’s fucking PTSD. One does not simply get shot through the throat and remember the feeling of holding it together with his own fingers and emerge from that _without_ significant trauma. He’s just glad that’s the only physical manifestation of his PTSD; choking himself awake instead of wetting the bed, because sometimes when he wakes up he can smell the phantom sting of urine in the air and remembers the way his drenched pants clung to his thighs as he was bleeding out in the dirt. No one’s said anything about him pissing himself back on the planet; they’d have to be a real asshole to do that, and McKay knows damn well that out of all of his teammates, _he’s_ the asshole friend, and even he wouldn’t mock a person for wetting themselves after being shot.

After two weeks trapped in the infirmary, one week into his self-guided speech therapy sessions (since Carson isn’t helping; seriously, why does McKay keep calling him his friend?), Sheppard ends up being the braver man. Well – “brave” is a generous term: Sheppard slinks in in the dead of night when most staff are off-duty, probably thinking McKay would be asleep. He’s only half-right; McKay _was_ asleep but had woken up gasping for air twenty minutes ago, and is now working on the next speech therapy practice. By the time Sheppard realises his mistake, it’s too late, because McKay spots him and glares until he has no choice but to shuffle over to the bedside.

_Took you long enough!_ McKay writes, twisting the whiteboard towards Sheppard. It earns him a half-smile which quickly vanishes as Sheppard sinks into the chair by his bed, shoulders slumped. He looks _awful_, which is a feat considering present company: gaunt cheeks, dark circles under his eyes, even his _hair_ limp. At first McKay thinks Sheppard isn’t going to say anything at all, but then he hears a broken, choked whisper:

“I’m so sorry, Rodney.”

Well, that’s nice to hear but ‘sorry’ isn’t going to _un-_shoot McKay, or miraculously give him his voice back without months and months of painstaking speech therapy. Frankly, McKay is fully prepared to hold this over Sheppard for, well, forever, but Sheppard looks so fucking miserable and sorry for himself that McKay actually feels bad for the guy that shot him. If he's pressed to admit it, he'll say that it wasn't Sheppard's fault; the guy was hallucinating, after all. McKay's done some stupid shit while hallucinating, like almost drowning himself at the bottom of the goddamn ocean even though his own hallucination was telling him _not_ to do the stupid thing. He wipes the board with his sleeve and writes, then snaps his fingers in front of Sheppard’s face and shoves the board under his nose.

_You shot ME. _‘Me’ is underlined three times. _You should be comforting ME, not the other way around!_

Sheppard has to take the board and hold it further away from his face to make out the scrawl that passes for McKay’s handwriting. When he deciphers it, he snorts softly and looks up, a small smile lingering on the corner of his mouth in the form of a wry twist. “You’re right,” he says, wiping the board and handing it back. “What can I do?”

See, that’s what McKay appreciates about Sheppard. The man is incapable of communicating anything personal; he’s like a damn fortress, the fewer words spoken the better. McKay talks like he’s running out of time; runs his mouth off like he’ll die any day and he hasn’t imparted enough words of wisdom upon the world. But they’re both similar in one regard, and that that neither of them _waste_ words. Sheppard doesn’t need words; his actions speak louder than all the words he never says. McKay talks all the time and he knows he bitches and moans about everything and everyone all the time but when push comes to shove – he knows his actions speak louder than all the words that stream from his mouth. At least, he knows that _now_; there’s a certain impact that life and death situations have on a person. The measure of a man, etcetera. McKay divides his life into two stages: before Atlantis and after Atlantis. Before Atlantis, he was a coward. He won’t admit that; if anyone asks, he’ll say he always knew he had it in him to make sacrifices, to power through the worst things a man can endure – torture, loss, failure, terror – but until he came to Atlantis, until he met Sheppard, until he had to face it day after day after day, he didn’t actually know he had it in him, and if he’d never come to Atlantis he wonders if he ever would.

Some of it – a lot of it – is because of Sheppard himself. Not that McKay will admit to that, either.

But back to what Sheppard can do for McKay. His voice will come back soon, the longer he keeps at the therapy, and when it does return the collective sympathies of the expedition will vanish, so there’s a narrow window of opportunity that McKay has to make others bend over backwards for him until they stop feeling bad for him. He writes three things on the board:

  1. Food.
  2. Chess.
  3. Gossip.

Sheppard smiles, and indulges. It’s almost enough to make him forget that the bandages have to come off eventually.

* * *

The bandages come off, and it’s not as bad as he’d thought it would be except for the fact that he has a flashback, starts hyperventilating, and passes out. Carson tries to keep him for a few more days – “Just for observation, Rodney!” – but some of that sympathy is wearing off and Carson’s team all but beg him to release McKay. Who says that being annoying isn’t a positive quality?

“You should take things slowly, Rodney,” Teyla urges over lunch in the mess hall. “You were dealt a very serious injury. There is no shame in taking the time you need to fully recover. Ronon agrees.”

“That’s not what I said,” Ronon grumbles, stabbing the Pegasus bargain-discount version of potatoes. “I said if he wants to fuck up his recovery by overdoing it then that’s his choice.”

Oh, _zing_. Sheppard broke McKay’s voice box, not his brain; there’s no reason he can’t go back to work, which he throws himself back into with wild abandon. It’s _almost_ the same in the labs as before, except that now he can’t yell at the idiots and they all tiptoe around him like he’s going to break, and Radek keeps asking him if he’s all right every two hours for the next three weeks. McKay continues his speech therapy (it’ll work, it’ll work, he just has to keep trying) and finds creative ways to work around the no-talking issue with a program that synchs his tablet to everyone’s laptops: if someone makes a mistake, he runs a script and a message pops up on their screens in blaring red capital letters and an alarm: _GO BACK TO PRIMARY SCHOOL_, or _WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!_ or _KEEP DOING THIS IF YOU WANT TO GET US ALL KILLED!_

That stops the tiptoeing, though Radek still asks if he’s all right, at least five times a day until eventually McKay threatens to assign him to repair the Marines’ latrines.

Radek swears loudly in Czech. “Even mute you are the biggest pain in my ass since my last colonoscopy!” he snaps.

Later, when McKay thinks about it, he thinks he can identify the split second where the carefully constructed denial he’d built around his grief and rage shattered into a billion billion tiny pieces.

It’s not what Radek said, not really, but the fact that McKay opened his mouth and tried to reply. He can’t remember what he’d wanted to say; something appropriately snarky, no doubt, that razor-sharp wit capable of reducing scientists to tears. The words themselves didn’t matter: all he remembers is that the instinct to respond was so natural that when he couldn’t, when he opened his mouth to speak and his throat failed him, he realised three fundamental truths at the exact same time:

  1. He will never hear the sound of his own voice again, because;
  2. the damage is permanent, therefore;
  3. he's not okay, not by a long shot.

And just like that – just like that, he falls apart.

* * *

Firstly:

He doesn’t leave his room for two weeks straight. Ronon visits him on day five and just about hauls him by the scuff of his shirt into the shower, clothes and all, because of the stench. Teyla visits on days six and seven to have tea with him, but only after she makes him get out of bed to tidy and air his room. Radek visits on day eight of his self-imposed confinement to run McKay through the latest power fluctuations going on in the city.

Secondly:

The bedwetting.

Psychiatrists call this a “goldmine”. It was a problem when he was a kid, all the way up to the age of seven or eight. His parents yelled a lot and he often had to hide in the bedroom with Jeannie, covering her ears with ear warmers and playing the electric keyboard as loudly as he could to drown out the screaming until it stopped. When he was older and earned a living wage he decided to talk to someone about it to understand what the problem was, because any part of his brain that failed him was inexcusable; he needed an explanation, because once something has an explanation, it takes away the mystery and then there’s no reason to fear it. One theory he forked out several thousand dollars for was that it was the one way he was able to subconsciously relieve himself (was that supposed to be a pun on the shrink’s part? How fucking immature) of his self-imposed burden of responsibility towards himself and his baby sister. The bedwetting stopped after three things happened:

  1. Their father moved out.
  2. Their mother started drinking instead of yelling.
  3. McKay stole his mother’s credit card to buy a real piano.

Hard to say which of the three was responsible. He misses it, sometimes. The piano, not yelling or the bedwetting.

Now when he dreams of the bullet slashing across his throat, the gaping wound under his fingers and the dirt under his cheek, he doesn’t just wake up choking on phantom blood; he wakes up drenched in his own urine too. It doesn’t seem to matter how often he relieves himself before taking sleeping pills, or how little water and coffee he drinks during the day.

Thirdly:

When Sheppard visits, McKay punches him.

Thing is, McKay isn’t military. He’s had some self-defence lessons; anyone who goes through the ‘Gate has to. But in a straight fight against someone like Teyla or Ronon or Lorne or Sheppard, McKay knows that his chances of winning are borderline zero. If he was actually fist-fighting with Sheppard, Sheppard would’ve had him on his back in a matter of seconds. But they’re not, and Sheppard can see the punch coming from a mile away and still lets McKay punch him, left fist to Sheppard’s right cheek. It bruises Sheppard’s cheek and fractures McKay’s hand, so it’s not half as satisfying as it should have been, so McKay does it again, and again, and Sheppard lets him, until he’s pounding uselessly on Sheppard’s chest, screaming without words and sobbing without sound. _You did this to me_, he tries to yell. _You did this to me. You took my voice away, you did this to me_ –

“I’m sorry,” Sheppard whispers, his lips against McKay’s ear and his arms around McKay’s body, holding him against him because his legs give way underneath him as he weeps, trembling in Sheppard’s arms. “I’m so sorry. God, Rodney, I – I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I can’t ever make this right, I know I can’t, but I’m – I’m here, you can hit me or you can, you can use me for whatever experiments you want, or you can tell me to go away and never come back, whatever you need, but I’m here and I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry –”

Which means Sheppard knew McKay is never getting his voice back, that the damage is permanent; it means everyone knew and the only one who didn’t want to believe it was McKay himself.

* * *

The three most important things to McKay, in order, are:

  1. His mind.
  2. His hands.
  3. His voice.

Jeannie used to listen to a Meatloaf song _ad nauseam_: _I want you, I need you, but there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you_. Meatloaf had been singing about unrequited love, not permanent disfigurement, but this feels a little bit like that. Two out of three ain’t bad. He’s almost a normal person and _oh my god_, McKay realises: _I’m disabled_.

It’s not that he’s disrespectful of the disabled, or – what is the politically correct way to refer to it these days? _Differently-abled_ people? God that sounds so stupid, so condescending; if he was disabled, which, he supposes, now he is, he’d hate to be called “differently-abled”. No – he _does_ hate it, because it’s a lie, it’s a big fat fucking lie for other people to feel better about themselves and their own perfect-health guilt by trying to convince him that just because he’s damaged doesn’t mean he’s broken, doesn’t mean he’s worthless, but he _is_ broken and he _is _worthless because if he can’t talk then what’s the fucking point? _What’s the fucking point?_ He’s disfigured, disabled, disgruntled.

And then there are the people who say _it could be worse. _Yes, of course it could be worse but that’s not exactly a comfort, is it? It could be worse: you could have woken up with brain damage. It could be worse: you could be in a wheelchair. It could be worse; you could be dead. So McKay needs to be grateful now that all he has is PTSD and no voice? He might not be able to yell at those well-meaning dumb grunts but he sure as hell can still write and blasts the entire military unit several abusive emails until Sheppard intervenes. The grunts give him a wide berth after that. McKay pretends to ignore the circle of distance he generates in the mess hall.

Anyway, this is the result of his realisation and subsequent mental breakdown:

  1. He’s asked to step down as CSO.
  2. He’s removed from active duty.
  3. He’s told that if he wants to remain on Atlantis, he has to learn ASL.

Elizabeth is very kind about it all, of course. That’s what makes it so hard. She’s being so gentle about it, so genuinely _sorrowful_ that it’s come to this. He wishes she’d cracked a few jokes or badmouthed the IOA folks back in the Milky Way who passed the decisions down the line to her, but she doesn’t, so it feels like a death sentence, and maybe it is because who is Rodney McKay if he isn’t the CSO and isn’t on Sheppard’s team and can’t fucking _talk?_ He grabs a paperweight off her desk and throws it through the glass window before she even finishes speaking, and holes up in the lab for the next four hours until Teyla guilts him into joining her for dinner. He eats with her and Ronon (Sheppard is making himself sparse again: _coward_), but McKay doesn’t enjoy it, not even when Ronon jokes that McKay is being “unusually quiet”.

Well. Maybe he smiles a _bit_ at that. Because at the end of the day – at the end of the day… yeah. It could be worse. He has his mind; he’s still a genius. He still has use of his hands; he can still fix impending technological and scientific disasters and masturbate, though it’s hard to enjoy masturbating when you’re afraid you’ll wake up in a pool of your own piss every morning. He can find other ways to communicate, but Jesus, learning ASL is so fucking _painful_. It’s its own complete language. McKay actually likes learning other languages; it's like learning music, but with words. He still speaks French (no, not speaks; he can read and write and understand French but he’ll never speak it again) and he has a basic grasp of Ancient, because there’s something beautiful and mathematical about languages, just like reading sheet music and translating it to the keys of a piano. But ASL – well, he’s sure Daniel Jackson can wax poetic about it until the end of the century, but it seems so – so _useless_ to McKay. Not the existence of it, duh; it serves a brilliant purpose for the deaf and mute, but what’s McKay going to do with it, flap his hands aggressively at a Wraith or a Genii? No one on Atlantis knows ASL. The ‘Gate won’t translate it. Imagine being in a situation out in the Pegasus galaxy and the fate of his team relies on him being able to explain something very complex and scientific, and all he can do is slap his hands together meaninglessly in front of the enemy of the day. Yeah, _that’ll_ save him. Not that he’ll ever be in such a situation again, of course. He’s not allowed.

At least Radek is helpful: he suggests creating a speech-generating device like the one Stephen Hawking uses. Well, ‘helpful’ is a relative term; McKay can’t think of anything worse than hearing a computer generate that mechanical, robotic synthesised voice on his behalf. That’s not to say his own voice was particularly dulcet but it was still _his voice_, Canadian with inflections and passion and familiarity. He _likes_ the sound of his own voice and now –

Now sometimes he worries he’s forgetting what he sounds like.

It’s a ridiculous thing he never realised he’d ever have to worry about. Who _forgets_ the sound of their own voice? Doesn’t he _think_ in his own voice? And yet when he tries to remember, it slips away like water through his fingers. Recordings don’t help, because they don’t count. It’s like looking through a photo album, recognising moments and figures from the past, frozen in time with no concept of what’s to come. There are several dozen hours of footage and Dictaphone recordings he can probably use, one day, to synthesise his own voice, but that’s even more depressing and pathetic thought which drives him to spend another week spent hiding in his room.

“You need a hobby,” Ronon advises him after beating the crap out of him with a stick, responsible for dragging him out again. McKay wheezes and rubs his bruised side, and shakes his head. “You do,” Ronon insists. “And I don’t mean holing up in the lab or meditating with Teyla. Do something to keep your mind busy.” He taps McKay’s forehead. “You think too much. You need an outlet. That’s why you’ve got issues at night.”

McKay slaps his hand away, his face burning. He wants to ask how Ronon knows, or better yet, yell at him and say he doesn’t know what Ronon’s talking about, but Ronon doesn’t say anything else; he just claps McKay on the shoulder and leaves him to his own humiliation and self-pity.

Ronon’s right, though. He does need a hobby. Learning ASL is _not_ a hobby, but he knows what else could be. When he finishes drawing up his plans, it’s late and the corridors of Atlantis are empty but for the soldiers on night duty. Doesn’t stop him from banging on Sheppard’s door. He could, in theory, use his earpiece, but he’s tried tapping out Morse Code before and that was more trouble than what it was worth, so he knocks until the door slides open and Sheppard is standing there with bleary eyes and bare feet.

“McKay?” he says, confused and half asleep. “What’s wrong?”

Oh, right; it’s the middle of the night. Oh well. He twists the tablet screen towards Sheppard.

_I need your help to build something_.

Sheppard rubs the sleep from his eyes to focus on the words. His hair is even more of a catastrophe than it usually is. Does that mean he uses product to _tame_ it? Is it _sentient_? “Right now?” Sheppard says, a whine to his voice, but then he remembers that McKay is mute because Sheppard shot him and quickly adds, “Yeah, of course. Anything, buddy.”

McKay shakes his head and clears the tablet. The next message is longer.

_I’m not asking you for help because you feel too guilty to say no. I’m asking for your help as my friend._

Sheppard reads it, then he inhales sharply and closes his eyes. “Shit, McKay,” he mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose and lowering his head.

McKay scrawls the next message and snaps his fingers in front of Sheppard’s face. _DON’T start crying. I’ll hit you again if you do._

Sheppard chokes on a laugh instead. “Whaddaya want to build?”

McKay swipes the screen to bring up his blueprints.

“You want to build a grand piano?” Sheppard says dubiously, taking the tablet. “Do you even know _how_ to build a piano?”

Why not? He has his mind and his hands. He’s built more complex things from scratch, like nuclear bombs and hyperdrives. He has the blueprints, the plans, the drive, the desire. He doesn’t need a voice to play the piano and he can only imagine the nightmare of logistics involved in getting a Steinway shipped from Earth to Atlantis. He shrugs at Sheppard: _nothing stopping me from trying_.

“Yeah, all right,” Sheppard says. “But – not _right_ now, right? It’s the middle of the night.”

McKay knows exactly three insults in ASL. Sheppard won’t know what it means but McKay, well, he’ll get a kick out of it. He places his right fingertips on the palm of his left hand and bends his knuckles twice.

Sheppard’s eyebrows shoot up. “Excuse me? _Weak?_ "

Now McKay is the one with eyebrows raised, because Sheppard knows ASL? Since when? He's never indicated he knows ASL or any other language other than the butchered version of English that Americans speak. Does that mean he's _learning -?_

"I’ll show _you_ ‘weak’.” Sheppard steps back, still clutching the tablet, to invite McKay into his quarters. “You want a piano? Get in here and show me how to make it. We start tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <strike>the alternate title of this fic is "mmm whatcha say"</strike>


	2. sonata: development

It takes Steinway & Sons approximately one full Earth calendar year to build one of their grand pianos, which then sells for anywhere between USD$35000 and USD$171000. McKay has no intention of building anything as extraordinary as a Steinway, nor does he intend to sell it; he just needs something to keep his mind and his hands busy in between his work on the Matter Bridge and the therapy sessions and the ASL lessons and the PTSD and depression. He’s got an official diagnosis now from Heightmeyer, for the long stretches of time where he can’t do anything but sit at his desk and weep, or the issues he’s been having in the labs where he stares at a board of equations and he knows what it is and he knows he knows the answer but the fog of despair clouds his mind and turns the world around him into haze and he doesn’t even seem to have the energy to pick up a marker.

It’s why he went to Sheppard to help him build this thing, because now Sheppard shows up at his door like clockwork every day in the afternoon and drags him out, regardless of whether McKay is focused on the Matter Bridge or if he’s weeping at his desk or if he’s lying on the floor unable to move and hasn’t shaved or showered in a few days. Sometimes it’s Teyla, when Sheppard is on duty, or Ronon, and even on a few occasions Zelenka and Elizabeth and Carson, which is – it's nice. It helps. There’s something very structured about the construction that helps him remember that there’s something concrete in his life right now, something that has a firm beginning and process and ending, instead of staring at the rest of his silent life like he’s looking down the barrel of Sheppard’s gun.

So yeah, it’s good, doing this with Sheppard. McKay has researched PTSD and he’s a big believer in cognitive behavioural therapy; exposure to the phobia, so to speak. He’s not afraid of Sheppard, of course – that would be stupid. Sheppard shot him one (1) time by mistake. McKay blew up five-sixths (5/6) of a solar system by mistake. Shit happens. He’s not afraid, per se, but there are – instances. Flashbacks. Sheppard raised his hand too fast the other day and McKay threw his hands up and recoiled, and spent the next half an hour choking and being talked out of a panic attack by Carson. It’s _embarrassing_. It’s embarrassing because in the past when he panicked, it was – controlled, in a way. Ford accused him of ‘crying wolf’ more than once, but it wasn’t, it was just how McKay vented the pent-up stress and pressure of constant life-or-death situations. He’s not a pessimist, he’s a realist – a ‘worst-case-scenarioist', if you will, because if he hashes out all the worst-case scenarios then it takes the fear of the unknown away and all that’s left is either acceptance or a solution.

There is no control with a panic attack, and it’s especially stupid because the flashbacks are his own brain tricking him into thinking he’s in danger when he’s _not_.

“Rodney, trauma takes time to recover from,” Heightmeyer tells him in just about every session, as if her repeating it will make him understand it. He knows it takes time to recover from – that's why he’s wasting time talking with her and attending these sessions, because it’s the same rationale: if he understands why his mind is failing him, then it takes away the mystery and there’s no reason for him to be afraid. He knows why he’s depressed and having flashbacks; he got shot, nearly died, and lost one of the things that made him, well, _himself_. He’s not in denial about his circumstances anymore, therefore, there’s no reason to have depression or flashbacks anymore. Heightmeyer can take her “It doesn’t work like that” and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.

His piano project, it does help. It’s also helped Sheppard’s mood, too, which is good, because dealing with his own issues on top of Sheppard’s relentless guilt and moping would’ve just been too much. Between him and the others pitching in, the piano begins to take form. Teyla hooked McKay up with some fine wood carvers and traders through the Stargate; Ronon returned from a trip with a coil of wires and the location of good metal reserves. McKay hogs the 3D printer (actually it’s a matter synthesiser donated by the Asgard to the humans, but the grunts started calling it the 3D printer so that’s what it’s called now) so much that eventually Elizabeth has to start a roster.

The keys are the last part, and the trickiest part. Back in the early days of piano construction, keys were made from sugar pine. Nowadays on Earth, they’re made from spruce or basswood, while black keys are typically made from ebony. The white keys used to be covered with strips of ivory, but that’s obviously out of the question because 1) ivory-yielding species are now endangered and protected by treaties on Earth; 2) where would he even _find_ an ivory-yielding species in the Pegasus galaxy; and 3) Elizabeth gave him that outraged/disappointed look when he put the request in anyway.

“Rodney, I helped _write_ some of the treaties to protect these endangered animals!” she’d exclaimed. “You are _not_ getting special dispensation.”

So, he supposes the sympathy about his mute situation has worn off, more or less. Fine, he _supposes_ he’ll make do with plastic. Yamaha invented a plastic called Ivorite which they _claim_ mimics the look and feel of ivory; McKay has his doubts but if there’s no other option, he’ll deal with it. Ivory chips more easily anyway, and synthesising it just won’t be the same, so the keys are on hold until his next trip to Earth – which ends up being a lot sooner than he’d thought.

“It’s your sister,” Sheppard had informed him, interrupting the piano construction. He’d seemed grim, so of course McKay’s first thought was, _oh my god, Jeannie’s dead and I’m being called back to Earth for her funeral_, which, given his present mental state, had been a pretty detrimental worst-case-scenario to endure until Elizabeth explained that actually Samantha Carter requested McKay’s return because Mrs Jeannie Miller submitted a theoretical physics proof that could fast-track the Matter Bridge.

He does make sure first that it’s not an elaborate trick to get him off Atlantis on a one-way, no-returns ticket. He’s been doing everything that was asked of him – stepped down as CSO (Radek looks like he hasn’t had a decent sleep in four months), doesn’t go off-world unless it’s for leisure (see: never), and is learning ASL (slowly). He still gets his work done and keeps the city running, despite the odd day here or there where he can’t get out of bed, or the odd nights where he’s too afraid to sleep so he hypes himself up on caffeine pills. Elizabeth assures him that the message is genuine, and he isn’t being reassigned or discharged from the program.

“As you’re so fond of reminding everyone, your voice box is broken, not your brain,” Elizabeth says, smiling fondly, if sadly. “We’ll see you when you get back, Rodney. I promise not to let Radek sink the city while you’re gone.”

A step through the Stargate to Earth; a month back on the _Daedalus_ to Atlantis. That means a month without Sheppard or Teyla or Ronon. A month without being able to keep building his piano; a month trapped in a small room on a ship where privacy is non-existent. He hides the bedliners he packs, and the months’ worth antidepressants, and throws up in the bathroom before he’s sent off.

* * *

“Welcome back to Earth,” Carter says.

McKay waves an impatient hand at her to skip past all the meaningless pleasantries as he shakes off the chill of the wormhole. He was impatient before his voice box was destroyed; now that he can’t interrupt the meaningless small talk of the lesser folks anymore, they just keep going and going and going to fill the silence and it’s fucking _intolerable_. He doesn’t need to be welcomed or chatted to about the weather now any more than he did before he was permanently injured.

Still, Carter raises an eyebrow, as if insulted by his silent abrasiveness. “Good to see you too, McKay.”

McKay huffs a sigh and signs hello at her, deliberately slow and annoying. There, does that make her feel happy? Is she pleased that she got him to respond to her in the most awkward way possible, does she think it’s funny that he can’t snap back? Did she really want him to return her greeting, or did she just want to make a point about his attitude and take advantage of his handicapped state to do it? God, he wants to yell at her, but what’s the point? He just sighs and strides through the ugly concrete-and-metal prison that is the SGC, not even stopping to stare at Carter’s ass, _that’s_ how much she’s pissed him off.

In the laboratory, she pisses him off even more. He didn’t know that was possible, but when she starts off with, “So, um,” and continues with, “as I wrote in my message...” and proceeds to recite her message about Jeannie, verbatim, it turns out, yeah, it's possible. 

Yes, he knows, he _knows_, she doesn’t have to regurgitate it all again for him, but his expression alone isn’t enough for her to cut it out; she keeps going and, Jesus, he knows that they used to argue and snipe and one-up each other but there was always a back-and-forth, a dance of words and insults that they always engaged in. And now that, that’s just – _gone, _because he can’t match her word for word. And now that he’s listening, really listening (that’s another thing – now he has to _listen_ to other people) she’s talking slower, too, like she thinks he can’t keep up with her words. Does she even realise what she’s doing? No, obviously, she doesn’t – no one realises that on some subconscious level they’ve started treated him like he’s an invalid. Even on at Atlantis, those who aren’t in what he calls his ‘immediate circle’ talk slowly to him, stare at the scars on his throat, use their hands to gesture on certain words as if it’ll make more sense to him. He’s neither deaf nor blind nor brain damaged, but apparently none of that matters because as soon as you’re _mute_, the world thinks you’re all of those things. Even Samantha Carter. He always did have a thing for dumb blondes, but this? This is just fucking insulting. He has a message he can bring up on his tablet at a single touch now, because of how often he has to use it, and he halts Carter’s slow, torturous humiliating ramble by shoving it in front of her face so violently it almost smashes her nose.

_I’M **MUTE**, NOT STUPID!_

Carter takes a long time, looking at that message. She takes the tablet and silently stares down at the words. Something in her expression – up until this moment tense but detached, like she didn’t really think it was the _real_ Dr Rodney McKay, PhD PhD, she was speaking to, and instead was just indulging his slow and silent imposter – cracks. Something like shame or guilt or grief flickers there as he watches her steady herself, swallow, and look back up.

“I’m sorry,” Carter says softly, handing the tablet back. “You’re right. I can’t imagine what it must like for you, and I didn't realise I was – making assumptions. It’s just, you’ve always been so… _verbose_, I suppose one might say –” oh, great, she's being _delicate_, “– so it’s… a bit of an adjustment.”

Oh, it’s an adjustment? For _her?_ Like it hasn’t been an adjustment for _him_, like he isn't waking up every morning with his own body playing scissors, paper rock: what’s it going to be? Will he:

  1. wake up thinking he’s fine, then try and fail to talk and remember everything at once?
  2. wake up choking and clutching his own throat, thinking it had split open during the night?
  3. wake up to the pungent sting of urine, with his pants and sheets drenched?

If he’s really unlucky, he gets all three in one go – that's always a trip. He’s ‘adjusting’, all right; now he lines his bed with special sheets so the mattress stays protected, that’s how well he’s _adjusting_. It’s just between him and Ronon and maybe Carson so he can deal with the humiliation, the embarrassment, the shame, the depression because that’s just what he has to do if he wants to stay on Atlantis, _adjust_ to his new shitty circumstances. And now that he’s _not _verbose – now that he has to struggle with signing out words and sentences, now that he has to be near a pad of paper or a tablet or a whiteboard to write down ideas and answers – people think he’s slow and they treat him as such, even if they don’t mean to. He doesn’t blame Sheppard for this. He _doesn’t_. But Jesus... sometimes he really fucking wants to, because his mind races at a million miles an hour and his voice was the closest thing that could keep up with it, and now it feels like there’s a deep gaping chasm between his thoughts and the rest of the world. Like he’s trapped in the back of that sinking jumper descending to the bottom of the ocean, screaming the answers but no one is in radio contact so all that’s left for him is to wait and trust that Sheppard will understand, that Sheppard will find him –

And it’s all because of that fucking bullet.

But sure, it’s an adjustment for _her_. He waves her off in disgust and holds up a finger to silence her as he finally, finally turns his attention to Jeannie’s physics proof. Carter shuts up and lets him read.

Surely this can’t be Jeannie’s work. Jeannie is – _was_ – brilliant, yes, maybe not at McKay’s level but certainly at least at Sam Carter’s level and this is certainly her style, but it can’t possibly be her work. She’s been out of the game for years. She was only the fast track to some pretty exciting grants, doing some pretty interesting work, but she hasn’t published a single theoretical physics paper in, like, four years, not since she got knocked up by that English lit major and dropped out of college and turned down those grants and her entire future so she could grow a small human.

“You haven’t published anything in years either, McKay,” Carter points out in response to his shorthand notes, which he’s been scrawling down on the notepad beside him. Turns out Carter knows Pitman shorthand. Makes it easier, if nothing else.

He points out – rightly so – that _his _work is all classified, to which Carter issues an unimpressed, “Uh-huh.” So’s _her _work, but – yeah, okay, the classified thing, it stings. It seemed like such a good idea when he was younger, to sign on with the SGC and Area 51 and the US government, change humanity’s understanding of physics and win a Nobel prize. He’s always wanted to build something that will outlive him, make his mark on the world, leave behind a legacy. But he’ll be an old man by the time any of his stuff gets declassified and he wins his Nobel prize, if he even makes it to that age. He’s been thinking about that a lot, these days – trying to imagine himself as an old man, trying to imagine _any_ of them as old, him and Carson and Sheppard, Teyla and Elizabeth and Ronon, even Radek, and it’s – it’s – it’s terrifying, how he’s not sure that he can see any of them _growing old_, at least not on Earth. Okay, maybe Radek will, he seems like he’ll make it to retirement and have a litter of bespectacled Czech kids, but the rest of them? Sheppard and his suicidal people-saving-thing? Ronon who’d rather die fighting than give up? Elizabeth who he _did_ see old after an eternity imprisoned in stasis to save them all from the fate of the original doomed expedition? _Himself?_ He still remembers the sick terror that filled his gut when he thought the nanites were going to rupture his brain and kill him. He still remembers meeting Sheppard’s eyes in horror as the hangar bay doors of the _Daedalus_ opened, thinking, _this is it_ as he waited for the vacuum of space to end his life. Holding his throat together with blood-slicked hands, thinking he’d bleed out in the dirt, light years away from Atlantis.

He’d always assumed that one day everything would go public and he’d be able to work anywhere in the world he ever wanted, any job at any university or government, his pick of research and staff, more money than he’d know what to do with and a wife with the brains and breasts of Samantha Carter. He’s not sure when he stopped imagining that future for himself - long before Sheppard shot him in the throat; maybe when he failed Collins, or perhaps even earlier, when he failed Peter Grodin – and even more uncertain of when he stopped _wanting_ that future for himself.

So, yes, there’s a sting for what he’s lost, what he’ll never have, but for the most part? Signing on to all of this _was _a good idea, the best decision he’s ever made without even realising it, and if he had to go back and do it all again while knowing all of the grief and terror of what was to come, he’d still sign on. Because if he hadn’t – if he hadn’t, he’d never gotten to become who he is now, never have met his best friends who are now his family, never have known Sheppard, never gotten to learn about the Stargates, the galaxy. He’d never have been able to reach Atlantis, his beautiful city of silver and water and learn her history and mysteries and knowledge and feel her come alive under his hands –

He has regrets. But Atlantis – she isn’t one of them. Even if he did get shot in the throat and lost his voice, but shit happens in the Pegasus galaxy.

It could’ve been worse.

Carter asks him how long it’s been since McKay last spoke to Jeannie. He holds up four fingers.

“Four months?” she guesses. He shakes his head. “Four _years?!_ Geeze, McKay, if I’d known that I wouldn’t have bothered bringing you back to Earth!” She rubs her forehead, as though in acute mental pain. “You realise what her proof means, right?”

Well, yes, if the math checks out. He doesn’t say that, though – Carter would probably snap that she’s been over it and checks out, but, uh, no offense, blue eyes, but he’d like a little more time with it himself. He opts for a grudging nod instead.

“Right, well, I was hoping you’d be able to convince her to help us out with it. Don’t give me that look, you know as well as I do that the work would go a lot faster if your sister was here.”

McKay scowls.

“The problem is, she’s been cleared by the Pentagon, but she refuses to sign the confidentiality agreement. She says she wants nothing to do with us. To be honest… she’s been a bit of a pain in the ass.” Carter smirks. “Must be a McKay trait, so I figured – _before_ I knew that you haven’t bothered to contact her in four years, anyway – that since you’re her brother she’ll listen to what you have to say.”

He narrows his eyes and scrawls a line of shorthand on the notepad: _Is that supposed to be a joke?_

Carter’s eyes widen. “Oh, God! No, I didn’t mean –” Then she stops and sees the smug look on his face, and scowls. “Oh, you’re just trying to make me feel guilty, aren’t you, you piece of shit.”

There’s an audible gasp of horror from a passing officer, a younger girl whose eyes are aghast. Carter’s mouth forms an ‘O’ as she realises how that sounded and tries to fix it: “No, you don’t understand, he –”

But the young officer flees, and Carter cringes.

“Great. Now everyone’s going to think I’m the bitch who mocked the mute.” She glares at him while he doubles over, heaving with snorts of laughter. “Laugh it up, Rodney.”

He does, and eventually, Carter does too.

“For what it’s worth, I really am sorry,” Carter says when they’re done. She holds up a hand before McKay can snarl at her. “I’m not saying that out of pity. You’re a pain in the ass, McKay, but you’re a brilliant one and I – I really do miss hearing your voice.”

It occurs to McKay that she’s the first person to actually say that to him. Plenty of people have said that they’re sorry and plenty of people have asked him how he’s handling it, but no one yet has indicated they miss the sound of his voice, miss hearing his stream of consciousness and his erratic shrieks of panic of impending doom until he gets an idea at the eleventh hour and boasts/stresses his way through to saving the universe. McKay’s throat feels tight, and not just because of the scars and the phantom pain.

Carter pretends not to see him blink away tears. “You going to be okay to talk to – uh, communicate with your sister on your own?” she asks, her hands shoved deep into her pockets. “Do you need a sign language translator to accompany you?”

He barely knows how to string the alphabet together to form names. McKay rolls his eyes, and taps on his earpiece for the _Daedalus _to beam him up.

* * *

It occurs to him, far too late, that he should have told Jeannie about his, uh, condition. He prepared for the meeting itself, of course – he’s holding a bunch of flowers in one hand and a deck of cards in the other that he’s written out answers to every single question he can anticipate – but until he’s actually standing on the deck of her house, ringing the doorbell, he considers there’s a slight possibility _she_ might have wanted to know before springing the meeting on her.

“Hi?” Jeannie says, confused, when she opens her door to find him on the porch.

She hasn’t changed a bit. Maybe she’s a bit fuller – pregnancy does that to a woman – and her hair is longer, but it’s like no time as passed for her at all, like McKay has stepped back on to Earth after three years away in another galaxy, only to find that everything is almost entirely the same, trapped in a time dilation field where the people just go about their boring lives and work their boring jobs. It feels like opening a book he stopped reading a lifetime ago, to the tagged page he last left it at. Jeannie is – she’s the same. He’d been worried she’d feel like a stranger to him, but staring at her, he realises _he_ feels like the stranger.

“What, are you just going to – stand there?” Jeannie asks when he doesn’t respond. “Don’t you have anything to say?” She takes the flowers he shoves at her in lieu of speech and stares at them. “What are these for?”

McKay opens his mouth. And freezes. Because he can’t – he was going to – but he can’t –

“I don’t believe this,” Jeannie exclaims, saving him another mental breakdown. “Four years of – of _no contact_, you just show up out of the blue with flowers and not even very nice flowers, at that – where did you get these from, the side of the road?”

He spent a good ten dollars on that bunch, actually, but –

“Oh – _oh_, this is about that physics proof, isn’t it. You work for the US government?!”

She holds up her hand to stop him from answering, because she doesn’t know he can’t, not yet, but –

“No, you know what? I don’t really care. I already told that Colonel woman that I want nothing to do with this and I’m not signing any agreement, especially not now that _you’re_ here to cajole me into it! Obviously they don’t know us very well if they think I’d just go along with getting all proprietary about our research because you show up on my doorstep. You know that’s what’s wrong with science today. Don’t roll your eyes at me, Meredith! Do you know that one fifth of our genes, the very building blocks of our being, have been patented by major pharmaceutical corporations? _One fifth!_ If there’s any benefit at all to what I’ve written, it’s that it’ll spark an idea in someone else. I am _not_ going to sign away my rights, least of all to the US military! And, and –”

Jeannie breaks off, breathing hard. She blinks, then blinks again, looking at McKay properly now.

“Why haven’t you _said_ anything?” Jeannie says, bewildered once more.

The great question for the ages. McKay shifts awkwardly on the spot.

Jeannie’s face pales. “Oh, god, you’re not here because of the proof, are you,” she whispers. “What’s wrong? Are you – _dying?_ You’ve got cancer, or – or –”

He shakes his head, and tugs down the high neckline of his undershirt to show her his throat.

Jeannie slaps a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. She doesn’t need to ask and he doesn’t need to find a way to tell her that this, this is what’s wrong, this is why he’s not saying anything; she takes in his expression instead and presses her hand to her chest now. “Meredith,” Jeannie breathes, “what _happened?”_

Oh, he prepared a card for this question. Saves him from struggling to sign it out (which, honestly, Jeannie won’t understand anyway unless she’s somehow become fluent in ASL in the past four years) or scrawl it on a tablet or white board, and last he knew, she doesn’t understand shorthand. He shuffles through the stack and holds out a card for Jeannie. She takes it suspiciously, probably still not sure if McKay’s faking or not until she reads the words.

“Excuse me?” she exclaims. “‘Friendly fire’?!”

Another card.

“It was an accid– _Meredith!”_

Another card: _Why are you angry at me?!_

There’s a long silence as Jeannie takes that in. When she speaks, it’s with a tremble in her tone. “I can’t believe you even have a card for that,” she whispers, crumpling it in her fist. “Oh, Meredith. You were _shot_? How? _When?_ Why didn’t you tell me? Is that why you’re –” He interrupts her with another card, scowling because he can’t keep up with all her questions even though he has cards for almost all of them. “What do you mean that’s _not _why you’re here?” Her eyes widen furiously. “You _are_ here because of the proof! You’re _unbelievable!_”

He rolls his eyes, and Jeannie scoffs, throwing her free hand up in outrage.

“Let me just – put all of this into perspective,” she says. “You show up after four years with a gunshot wound across your throat and no voice and you want me to sign a confidentiality agreement to give my physics proof to the US government. Is that right?”

It sounds bad when she puts it _that_ way.

“Get inside this moment, Meredith Rodney McKay, and explain yourself!”

Well, it’s better than being turned away. Before they can go inside, Jeannie’s husband emerges from the house with a small human in his arms. “Is everything okay?”

Shit, what’s his name? Jacob? Carob?

“Look who showed up,” Jeannie says, waving the wilting flowers in McKay’s direction. Jarob seems confused, until Jeannie mutters, “It’s my brother. Meredith, you remember Kaleb.”

_Kaleb_. Stupid name.

“Oh, right! Hey.” Kaleb puts the child down, which is a huge mistake because she launches herself at McKay’s legs and throws her arms around him.

“Madison, this is my brother, Meredith,” Jeannie says. “Your uncle.”

Madison beams up at McKay, and he’s struck, for a moment, by just how much she looks like Jeannie did at her age. “Hello.”

McKay pats her head, trying to figure out how to escape her. Is it considered rude to shove a child?

“Did you bring me a present?” Madison asks.

“Madison!” Jeannie laughs, pulling her demon spawn away.

“Uh, I just made some dinner,” Kaleb says. “Would you care to join us?”

Actually – he’s pretty hungry. They have _no_ idea what time zone he’s just come from.

Jeannie interrupts before he can find the ‘Yes’ card. Not, as McKay thought, to uninvite him from dinner, but to advise her husband, “He was – injured, Kaleb. He can’t speak.”

“Oh,” Kaleb says dumbly, then he registers what Jeannie has said and goes, “_Oh!_ Um. I know ASL.”

How great for him. Of _course_ the English major knows ASL. McKay stares disbelievingly at the flurry of movements Kaleb makes with his hands – McKay’s _mute_, not deaf, he can’t fathom why his brilliant STEM-field sister married _this _idiot – and shoves a card into Kaleb’s signing hands to make him stop.

“Oh, you’re still learning,” Kaleb says, reading the card and blinking rapidly. He hands it back and glances between Jeannie and McKay, like he’s not too sure what’s going on but realising that it must be both important and extremely awkward and he’s not a welcome addition to the proceedings. “Well, uh, I sure hope you like tofu chicken.”

McKay sure hopes he’s kidding.

Dinner isn’t as awkward as he’d feared, probably because Jeannie and Kaleb talk to include him without expecting him to interrupt or change the topic or say something condescending or inappropriate in front of their kid. And, oddly, he doesn’t mind or care because they’re not talking about anything interesting enough for him to even bother paying attention to the in first place. Madison looks as bored as he is, both of them prodding at their tofu turkey, until she shifts her chair closer to his.

“Uncle Meredith,” Madison says quietly, “why are you being so quiet?”

McKay swallows a mouthful of tofu and stares down at her.

Jeannie rescues him. “Oh, Maddie, he –” Jeannie shares a look with Kaleb. “Your Uncle Mer lost his voice, sweetie.”

‘Lost’ his voice. That’s – that’s a nice way of putting it. Makes it sound like it’s just misplaced. Any day now he’ll open a drawer or turn a corner and realise it’s been there the whole time, or someone will stop him in a corridor and say, “Oh, hey, I found this! Is this yours?”

Madison takes his hand, gazing up at him with wide eyes. “I’m sorry you lost your voice, Uncle Mer. I hope you feel better soon.”

If his eyes glaze over and he has to wipe his nose between mouthfuls of the most disgusting fake turkey he’s ever eaten in his life, Jeannie doesn’t draw attention to it. It’d be rude to point how bad her own husband’s cooking is, after all. After dinner, scraping most of the plate into the trash, Jeannie comments that even as an adult he won’t eat his greens. McKay has nothing against vegetables. He was just in the mood for, well, food.

“I’m gonna give Maddie her bath,” Kaleb says, “let you two catch up.” To McKay he adds: “Hey, uh, pop your head in before you leave.”

McKay’s bewildered expression must be enough of a substitute for signing _Why?_, because Kaleb points out, “Children like to say goodbye.”

Oh, right, sure. It’s weird, thinking of the girl as his niece. Genetically they’re related, yes, but blood does not a family make. Still, Madison had been – pleasant enough, he supposes, for work-in-progress human.

As soon as Kaleb vanishes with Madison, Jeannie turns to him.

“I’m so angry with you, Mer,” she whispers.

Okay, that’s so not fair. Yeah, he should’ve told her in advance about his – _injury, _but he’s the one who got shot, not her.

“You know, I had this – this entire speech prepared for the day you came out of the blue and stormed your way back into my life. I knew you’d find some way to just throw everything into chaos, because you’ve always been dramatic –”

Wow, rude?

“– and you didn’t even say sorry for cutting me out of your life after Madison was born and vanishing for four years, and now that you’re here I _can’t_ give you a piece of my mind because you can’t even talk back!”

Sounds like she’s having no trouble giving him a piece of her mind. He’s about to roll his eyes and give her a piece of _his_ mind, but then freezes before he can grab his notepad because Jeannie is leaning against the sink now, hiding her face but distinctly sniffling as her shoulders hitch and oh, god, she’s crying.

McKay’s throat clenches. Breathe, he thinks, breathe, don’t fall apart here, no one else is going to talk him through a panic attack if he has one now. He reaches for the notepad, writes a message, then taps Jeannie on the shoulder. She wipes her cheeks and takes the note.

_Please don’t cry. If you start, I’ll start, and neither of us want that. I’ve been told I’m an ugly crier._

She manages a small smile. “You _are_ an ugly crier,” Jeannie agrees, which is rude, _again_, but it does the job: she stops tearing up and now he won’t have to let himself feel that loss either. He sighs and tears the page off, crushing it in his fist and tossing it into the bin after the remains of the tofu turkey.

Jeannie leans against the counter, her brow furrowed. “You don’t even know ASL,” she says. “How long ago did – did it happen?”

He holds up five fingers.

“Five weeks?!” she exclaims, then at his exasperated expression, she realises, “Oh, five months. Well, you really should know more ASL by now.”

Now he rolls his eyes, and writes a new message.

_You need to come with me, right now. Your proof is going to lead to something ground-breaking._

“How long would I be gone?”

_A couple of months, tops._

“A couple of months?! Are you joking? Madison has her first ballet recital next Tuesday! I can’t miss that.”

Sure she can. Madison is four; how good can she possibly _be?_ McKay barely remembers things from before the age of four except how slow and stupid every other kid in preschool seemed to be, especially the teachers who didn’t let them count higher than ten. Madison won’t remember Jeannie not being there. But he doesn’t have a card for this because it’s not like he thinks his stream-of-consciousness ahead of time; that’s the whole point of being able to talk, so that he can communicate what comes to mind. That’s what makes him _him_.

And now that he can’t, he’s suddenly a lot… _less_ him.

He’d have said it, if he could, and that probably would’ve made Jeannie mad because he’d be implying that her duties as a mother are less important than her potential contribution to an understanding of physics so advanced that she’ll never be able to read a textbook on Earth again without knowing it’s lightyears behind. And so what if that makes her mad? That’s his opinion; he doesn’t hold back on those, no matter the audience. There’s a reason he had seldom few friends at school and college. Okay, no friends. Whatever. He doesn’t care about that; he’s never compromised on who he is and how he interacts with people because the people that take him exactly as he is, they’re his true friends, his true family. What was it that Jeannie once told him? That she loved him, but she didn’t _like_ him. His colleagues on Atlantis, they respect what he does and they know they’d be dead a thousand times over without him, but they don’t _like_ him. He’s fine with that, he’s always been fine with that – he doesn’t _care_ about not being liked, even by his own sister. If he cared about being liked he’d have made half an attempt to censor himself, as if he cares enough about other peoples’ opinions to engage in _that_ ludicrous exercise.

What he’s _not_ fine with is being liked better now because he can’t be who he is without his voice.

“Look, Mer,” Jeannie sighs when he doesn’t produce a card or attempt to sign or write something down on the notepad. “I know what you’d say. You’d probably say something insensitive like how this – whatever _this_ is – is bigger than my responsibilities, and I’d get mad at you for belittling my choices, and then we won’t see each other again for four years. And then next time you’ll turn up on my doorstep missing a – a leg, or a hand, or something else! This is… this is hard enough, you know? I don’t want to go through all that again.”

He has a card. Not for how difficult this is, for her or for him, because that’s getting into personal stuff and, honestly, no, though he finds it hilarious (in a bitter, twisted way) that she’s acting like this situation is as hard on her as it is on him. Seriously, what is with people, acting like his permanent disfigurement and disability is harder on _them?_ Maybe he’s hiding his PTSD too well. But that’s not what he wants to get into. He has another card to get them both back on topic: _This is important. More than you could ever imagine._

“For you, I’m sure it is. But this, me being here for my daughter? _This_ is important to me. Why can’t you accept that?” Jeannie shakes her head. “It’s just a math proof, theoretical physics. No practical application at all. How important could it possibly be?”

_You’re wrong._

“Then tell me what it’s for!”

_Not until you sign the agreement._

“I’m not signing the agreement until you tell me.”

Drastic times call for drastic measures. He huffs a sigh and grabs her hand, and before she can pull away, they’re beamed up to the _Daedalus_. He – and Carter – are on the verge of convincing Jeannie when she breathes, “What have you gotten yourself involved in here, Meredith?”

Oh no.

“_Meredith_?” Carter repeats.

Oh, _great_.

* * *

It takes Jeannie three days to decide whether or not to come to Atlantis.

Honestly, McKay can’t wrap his head around her hesitation. It’s not like Madison’s other parent is a neglectful alcoholic or a verbally abusive emotional manipulator; Kaleb is a bit dumb but he’d seemed _nice_ and like a responsible, caring father, and McKay knows his sister wouldn’t choose to stay with anyone who even remotely resembled their parents. But Carter agrees to the three days for Jeannie to make up her mind, which means McKay gets three days more or less to himself.

He spends the entirety of the first day in a second-hand music shop, pouring through folders and baskets of aged sheet music. Haydn’s Sonatas, Mozart’s piano concertos and Symphonies; overtures and operatic scores and even a few contemporary pieces and modern musical theatre books that he gets just for fun or because Sheppard said he liked them, even though McKay doesn’t think they have much in the way of musical value.

The second day, he buys a vinyl record player and nearly thirty separate albums, mostly recordings of Canadian and Russian and German and Italian orchestras performing his favourite pieces.

On the third day, the Ivorite keys order he placed via Yamaha is ready to be collected. Fifty-two white keys and thirty-six black keys, plus two octave’s worth of spares, just in case; things get hairy on Atlantis sometimes, so it pays to have back-ups. He gets the word that Jeannie has signed the confidentiality agreement on his way back to the SCG with his loot in tow.

“Sorry, sir, this is three times the luggage weight limit allowed per person onboard the _Daedalus_,” he’s told after marking up all of his carefully wrapped packages to beam them up to the ship in geosynchronous orbit.

He’s about to pitch a fit when Carter’s hand lands firmly on his shoulder. “It’s all right, he has permission,” she says.

“But, Colonel Carter –”

“Remove whatever you have to from the _Daedalus_ to in order to accommodate Dr McKay’s belongings. That’s an order.”

The officer snaps to attention, but he doesn’t look happy about it. “Yes, ma’am!”

McKay waits until the officer, and his belongings, are beamed away before turning to Carter. He can’t meet her gaze, but he raises his right hand to his lips, then lowers it in Carter’s direction, the tips of his ears burning red.

Carter smiles. “You’re welcome, Rodney,” she says, and shakes his hand. “Good luck.”

* * *

He splits his time three ways on the _Daedalus_:

  1. Working on the Matter Bridge with Jeannie.
  2. Building the final section of his piano with the pieces he brought on board.
  3. Locked in his quarters crying.

Without Sheppard to drag him out of that last one, it takes over more time than he’s willing to admit and he hates himself for it. The bedwetting, that’s even worse here than it is on Atlantis, and harder to hide it, so he tries to avoid sleeping for several days at a time instead, which helps with the clean-up but seriously hinders his ability to function. Carson doesn’t like it when he downs caffeine pills, but McKay’s done the research (as much as “research” is possible where medicine is concerned) and caffeine doesn’t affect the concentrations of most tested antidepressants either in serum or brain tissue.

“Lack of sleep is proven to exacerbate depression and anxiety,” Carson had told McKay, very sternly, when McKay asked for the caffeine pills before leaving Atlantis, but it hadn’t seemed possible to McKay at the time that his depression and trauma could get any worse than it already is, so what's the problem? He's fucked up either way; might as well be productive during his impairment. When he works on the Matter Bridge with Jeannie, he knows she can see his bloodshot eyes and the way he fights the fog and haze clouding his brain on bad days, but no matter how much she urges, he doesn’t want to talk about it.

One particularly bad day, halfway to Pegasus, Jeannie finds him in his quarters. He hasn’t shaved, but he has showered and cleared away the MRE packages and changed his sheets earlier so the evidence of his shame and weakness is gone, and he’s on the floor with the Ivorite keys.

“There you are,” Jeannie says. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I need your help with – are those piano keys?”

He doesn’t have the energy to look up at her; it’s hard enough trying to concentrate on the keys.

“This is what your luggage was – you're building a piano,” Jeannie says, kneeling beside him. “Wow. This is beautiful.” She trails a hand down the keys. “You used to play.”

When he couldn’t escape the house through school or study, he could through music. Music had this… perfect _order_ to it, a mathematical beauty to its existence. Physics and maths was, _is_, beautiful to McKay; it always made more sense than other people, and music was just the audible application of the universe’s perfection. If something so beautiful could exist because of the mathematical order of the basic building blocks of the universe itself, then surely it meant there was more to life than listening to his parents scream at each other day in and day out.

Then he stopped playing. A fine clinical player, his teacher had said, but no sense of the art, no feel for the music.

When he thinks back, he pinpoints that remark as the first time in his life – possibly the _only_ time in his life – when his feelings had truly been hurt, and it had nothing to do with his personality. It came down to a flaw in his very being. It’s the only thing about himself that he’s ever wanted to change; the vicious irony there being that it’s the only thing about himself that he _can’t_ work to change. You’re either a natural, or you’re not, and he wasn’t. He’s not. It was the only time in his life he’d felt – inadequate. Lacking. Out of touch with the universe, when all he’d wanted to do was admire it, feel it come to life under his hands the way Atlantis breathes for him and sings for Sheppard. Every time he so much as thought about touching the keys of his piano after his teacher stopped their lessons, he’d hear that bruising line echoing in his mind over and over and over again, and honestly, it probably ranks as high as the pain of the bullet across his throat that silenced him. It’s true, though. Music is supposed to flow, the player is supposed to be able to just feel what comes next, not turn it into a mathematical equation.

There’s a certain irony to the fact that now that he has no voice he feels free to play again, because ‘freedom’ is just another word for nothing left to lose.

“Well, that’s good,” Jeannie says when McKay doesn’t say anything. “I used to love listening to you play the keyboard. You must’ve been too loud for me, though, because I always needed earmuffs.”

Oh. She doesn’t – oh. She doesn’t remember.

That’s funny. No, really, it’s hilarious, a fucking riot. Of course she doesn’t remember – she was only four years old to his eight, and he’s as relieved as he is devastated that she doesn’t remember the way their parents howled at each other every single night. A bad few years of constant anxiety and dread every time he heard his father come home, the slammed doors and the tightly pressed insults that soon spiralled out of control into screeches and smashed glasses, the toxic words that he can never unhear about how their lives were ruined because of him. Jeannie doesn’t remember, she’s been spared that, which means it’s a trauma they don’t share as brother and sister, apparently never have and now never will.

She definitely remembers the bedwetting, though. So that’s just great.

He hides his burning face and hunches his shoulders up to his ears, the universal signal for “leave me alone”.

Jeannie huffs behind him. “Fine,” she snaps. “I’m sorry for trying to take an interest in your activities. I won’t bother you again.”

He holds back the tears until the door slides shut behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, Rodney, you're not allowed to requisition ivory for your piano.
> 
> Thank you so much to every single person who took the time to comment!! Your feedback means the world to me. I hope you've enjoyed Part 2 - I'd be grateful for your thoughts on it! <3


	3. sonata: recapitulation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sincerest thanks to everyone else who has commented! Your feedback on this fic has been much appreciated and I’ve enjoyed writing this story and being part of the SGA fandom. I was meant to post this yesterday but, well, shit happens. Hope you enjoy the conclusion!

“In-chamber conditions are green,” Radek says. “Containment field is green. Monitors are green.”

“Everything’s green,” Jeannie interrupts, impatient.

Radek shoots an apologetic look between her and McKay, then leans forward and lowers his voice. “He likes to do the checklist.”

While McKay was working on work, working on his piano, or working on crying on the _Daedalus_ during the trip back to Atlantis, Radek had been working on the blueprints to complete the Matter Bridge – so, basically, he’d just been doing his job as he ought to have, which in McKay’s opinion wasn’t particularly deserving of any particular praise. But Jeannie, well, you’ll never meet anyone as trusting or as kind as her, so of course the first thing she did when she arrived on Atlantis was praise Radek for doing his job, and now he’s obsessed with keeping her happy.

Unbelievable. Radek doesn’t care about keeping _McKay_ happy.

McKay rolls his eyes and checks the screen. ZPM is green, back-up terminals are green. He gives the okay sign to Radek.

“We’re ready to initiate power-up,” Radek says.

“Good luck,” Elizabeth says.

Even depressed and traumatised, McKay is a genius; the initialisation is a success. The containment field holds and power generation is steady. He’s about to beam and turn to his scientists for their awe and applause, but Jeannie kills the mood: “What about exotic particles?” she asks.

Geeze, can she give him a chance? McKay snaps his fingers in Radek’s general direction to make him answer.

He and Radek worked out a code ages ago but the simplest and fastest one is where McKay snaps and Radek confirms. Radek had been less than pleased at first – “I am not dog to call to heel, Rodney!” – but short of any other low-maintenance alternative, the finger-snapping is their language now. It’s a poor imitation for what they used to have. Zelenka isn’t like Sheppard; he can’t immediately work out exactly what McKay is thinking just by looking at his expression. He’s also _far _too nice with the scientists, who still get blasted every now and then with McKay’s programming scripts when they fuck up their numbers.

Zelenka is the CSO now; if anyone should be telling off the scientists and keeping them in line, it should be him. But only a scant few weeks after McKay stepped down, Radek had slumped down beside McKay’s then half-built piano to assist him with the frame construction and sighed. “I don’t know how you do this, Rodney,” Radek had confessed, hair frazzled and glasses slipping down his nose and looking somehow both sleep-deprived and on an accelerant; McKay later learned that he’d been powering through five consecutive late nights with caffeine pills, just to keep up with it all. “My mind must be on everything at once. Is too much. _Do prdele_, I never thought I would say this but I miss being bossed around by you.”

So, the finger-snapping. And the computer scripts.

Radek sighs and says, “He is on it. We are holding at... five percent.”

“Good,” Elizabeth says. “Now what?”

It’s Jeannie who answers. She answers correctly, of course – that the safe thing to do is hold at five percent for the next while and analyse the data for any concerning readings or fluctuations, but all he can bitterly think is, _She wasn’t talking to you. _That’s what he _wants_ to say, and he knows it’s rude and more than a little conceited and yes, yes, he knows he can be a small, petty man prone to fits of jealousy, even (especially) of his own sister, he _knows_, but so what, that’s just who he is, and opens his mouth to blurt it out, but then he realises:

  1. He can’t.
  2. Elizabeth _was_ talking to Jeannie.
  3. No one actually needs him to contribute anything at this stage.

Even if he’d waved his hands and signed something out, no on here knows enough ASL to translate it themselves except for Elizabeth, and no one is looking his way anyway. He could snap his fingers at Radek again, but to what end? The moment his part in this was over, they all shift back to the people who can speak. Making a fuss without thinking about it is one thing; making a pre-meditated fuss is another thing entirely, and storming out is nothing short of childish, which is exactly why he does it. Petty, arrogant, bad with people – he has a reputation to uphold. Radek and Jeannie call after him – half-heartedly, if he does say so himself – but he doesn’t slow down until he’s on the other side of Atlantis and standing before his grand piano.

It’s not long before Sheppard finds him working, drowning his thoughts in the methodical assembly of their piano, and joins McKay in silence.

Thing is – Sheppard kept working on it while McKay was on Earth and the _Daedalus_. Something curious has been forged in the wake of the bullet, the trauma, the piano: McKay has, for some time now, considered Sheppard his best friend without presuming that he is, in turn, Sheppard’s best friend. It’s not like Sheppard is particularly good at _expressing_ emotions, after all – but then Sheppard shot him and there was guilt, yes, but beyond the guilt there was something a little like devotion, like tenderness, and okay, yes, maybe McKay’s got a bit of Stockholm Syndrome (god that’s fucked up, but they’re living on an ancient mythical city and battling space vampires so give him a break) and since the Incident, since the night McKay showed up at Sheppard’s door and asked him as his friend to help him through his, hmm, _issues_…

Well. There’s not a lot that they need to _say_ anymore.

“That’s it?” Sheppard eventually asks; it’s hours later and almost midnight and McKay feels a little drunk. There’s a sheen of sweat on Sheppard’s forehead, which is wiped away by the back of his sleeve. “We’re done?”

Yeah. They’re done. Well, almost; he needs to tune it first, but yeah, they’re done. McKay exhales and bows his head, letting his hand rest over the keys.

Sheppard’s hand brushes his shoulder, then falls away. “When you’re ready,” Sheppard murmurs, “I’d, uh. I’d really like to hear you play. If you’re – comfortable, letting me listen.”

What sort of question is that? Of course he wants John to hear his music, but just – not _yet_. It’s been so long since he last laid hands on a piano and felt the keys under his fingers. A fine clinical player, but no feel for the art –

McKay nods, but he brings the lid down over the keys and sweeps the fabric cover over the piano, and when he turns to face Sheppard, he finds himself alone.

(He comes back, hours later. The first notes under his fingers are like a distant memory, a song of seasons gone, shaky and tentative and terrified, _a fine clinical player_ – but it’s beautiful, so beautiful, and that night he dreams of music and the sheen of sweat on Sheppard’s forehead.)

* * *

He sleeps through the night without nightmares and wakes without wet sheets.

It’s a good (if late) morning, and immediately he’s annoyed with himself because, shit, why can’t it be like this every day? He feels _fine_ now, like the haze and the grief that hits each day with the flip of coin is barely conceivable, like he’s been faking his PTSD. That’s also apparently a symptom of depression – how inconsistent it can be sometimes – but pretty much everything he feels is apparently a ‘symptom of depression’ according to Heightmeyer, which just goes to show that psychology is even less of a science than biology, and that’s _really_ saying something. He shaves and showers and makes his way to the mess hall (where he stacks his tray with as much food as he can balance on it) and finds – well, everyone.

Well, not _everyone_, but enough everyones to make him feel – self-conscious. Ronon, Teyla, Sheppard, all at a table with Jeannie, all of them laughing. He approaches cautiously; could be a coincidence, them all sitting together and having a grand old time, could be a deliberate gathering that he was excluded from, probably because of the moping and angst and irritability and the perpetual turning-down-of-lunch-invitations thing he’s an expert at.

“Hey, _Meredith_,” Ronon drawls says as he draws close.

Oh, wonderful. Suddenly he’s a lot less hungry. He glares down at Jeannie, who grins up at him all innocent-like, but he knows what that trouble-making glint in her eye means. “Morning. John here was kind enough to show me around, offer me a warm meal, and, uh, introduce me to some of your friends,” she says, far too innocently.

McKay squints suspiciously.

“We weren’t talking about you,” Sheppard reassures him, badly. At McKay’s dubious expression, Teyla adds, “No, we were discussing... many things.”

And they all share a laugh again.

For three horrible, stricken seconds, McKay thinks: _She told them about the bedwetting_.

Because that’s the exact sort of embarrassing story that a younger, bratty sister would dredge up to humiliate her smarter, more successful older brother in front of his friends. She doesn’t _know_, of course, about his current issues, but when has that ever mattered where brothers and sisters are concerned?

But none of them quip about it, so – maybe Jeannie didn’t say anything. Or maybe she did, and someone changed the topic because while no one has mocked him for pissing himself after getting shot, it’s still not something anyone brings up out of, what, respect? Consideration? Whether they find it a disgusting secret or an understandable fact of the very serious situation doesn’t matter; it’s not something people talk about, and the moment that changes is the day McKay plans to make life on Atlantis very, very difficult for the son of a bitch who wants to embarrass him.

Jeannie _did _tell them about the time he was forced to eat lunch with his underwear on his head. So that’s real nice, Jeannie, _thanks_.

Elizabeth, at least, is on his side: _“Colonel Sheppard and Dr McKay, to the isolation room immediately!”_

* * *

McKay had anticipated three possible scenarios:

  1. An unstoppable overload that will lead to the immediate and devastating destruction of Atlantis.
  2. A rip in the fabric of space and time that will lead to the immediate and devastating destruction of Atlantis and possibly the universe.
  3. Not this.

He’d always thought that meeting himself – clone, past-or-future self, alternate reality version or otherwise – would be more profound, or trippy. Like – would he feel an instantaneous and incredibly deep bond with his literal double, or would it be like meeting a long-lost sibling? Would his double know everything he’s thinking, or would it be a Mirror Verse situation and actually Yendor YakCm is pure evil and planning total galactic domination and/or annihilation?

Turns out it’s not profound at all. It’s infuriating.

The other McKay can _talk_.

He introduces himself as ‘Rod’, which immediately bodes poorly: McKay could never get anyone to call _him_ Rod. And what’s with the spiky hair? Is that _product?_ Why is he wearing a leather jacket? That’s not regulation – what sort of slacker universe has this schmuck come from, anyway? Jeannie refers to McKay as “Rodney” rather than “Meredith” for quite possibly the first and only time in their lives when she takes over his side of the introduction, glaring at him when Rod (ugh) confirms that his universe is indeed populated.

Too long; don’t read: the Matter Bridge gets shut down, and Rod’s job is done.

Jeannie asks what they’re all thinking: “But how did you plan on getting back to your own universe?”

“The matter bridge you created is unidirectional,” Rod says, which isn’t an answer, so Jeannie and McKay fill it in themselves. That means Rod isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

McKay thinks: _Fuck_.

“Well, now that that’s all out of the way – _you’ve_ been unusually quiet, if I do say so myself,” Rod says, now looking at McKay, and he chuckles like he’s made some sort of hilarious joke. “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue? Blown away by our rugged good looks?”

McKay yanks the collar of his shirt down to expose his scarred throat, which to his great satisfaction shuts Rod’s stupid jokes up immediately.

“Ah,” Rod says, serious now. “Well, that’s – that’s different. Hmm. No matter.” And he proceeds to sign out a sentence faster than McKay can translate it.

Of _course_ wonder-boy knows ASL, but obviously he’s as dumb as Kaleb because, again, McKay’s mute, not deaf; he doesn’t need _other people_ to sign _at_ him. McKay feels the tips of his ears burning and slowly – clumsily – signs out: _I’m not fluent yet_.

“Really?” Rod says, frowning. “Oh. Oh, this is a – a recent injury, then. Well, that’s – that’s, uh – inconvenient. For you. How’d it happen?” At McKay’s furious snarl, Rod holds up his hands and leans back. “Okay, all right! Sensitive topic, got it. But I think we should at least –”

What McKay should at least do, he doesn’t know – he walks away.

It is, of course, too much to hope that meeting his literal double had in fact been a dream or a hallucination – McKay does tend to hallucinate when he’s under a lot of stress, after all – but the next morning in the mess hall quickly disabuses him of that distant hope when he finds Jeannie, Sheppard, Ronon and Teyla (again! Is he just not getting the team emails?) eating and laughing.

With _Rod_.

Turns out it was a ‘breakfast date’ with Jeannie that ballooned into a group affair. Rod invites McKay to sit down and join in the game – tracing back their lives, trying to find the little differences between their pasts. There’s _one_ pretty obvious difference in their pasts that everyone is steadfastly avoiding, of course, so they focus on inane things instead, like how Rod is an honorary member of the Athosian Council, and how Rod is godfather to his niece and nephews, and how Rod spars with his universe’s Ronon, and how Rod is this and Rod is that and oh Rod you’re so _wonderful. _Rod even earns points for doing a humble-brag: “Well, it's easier for me. Our Earth has a ZPM too, so it makes the back and forth a lot simpler.”

McKay tries not to roll his eyes. Frankly, he deserves a medal for his self-control.

The only one who’s not really joining in is Sheppard, who’s being incredibly quiet and focusing intently on his tray, which means he’s doing his guilt thing again. What a sight the two of them must make – sitting side by side in tense and semi-miserable silence, listening to McKay’s identical not-twin run off at the mouth, talking like he’s running out of time, filling the gaping wound in the team that was left when McKay’s voice was stolen.

Maybe there is something to that profound connection thing McKay was wondering about earlier; he does, actually, know what Rod is about to say and if he closes his eyes and moves his lips along with the words, it almost, _almost _feels like the voice is his and his words are strong and clear and he’s not broken, he’s not damaged, he’s still here with his friends, his team, he’s talking and he’s _whole_ –

“Meredith?” Jeannie’s voice says, soft and low and careful, followed by the touch of her hand on his shoulder. McKay starts with a jerk, eyes flying open and inhaling so sharply that the breath latches in his throat and everything hurts for a horrible second – then he realises that they’re all staring at him and his cheeks are wet.

He dries his face furiously and storms off (three times in three days!) but things swiftly deteriorate after that, including but not limited to a fight with Jeannie which ended in _her_ storming off after what had been an incredibly impressive soliloquy (“We haven’t talked in four years, and yes, it _is_ all on you! I had no way of getting in touch with you! And _don’t_ give me that excuse, that you were doing top secret research in another galaxy. You could’ve sent me a message. You, called me on my birthday, at – at Christmas. Once a year. That’s all I would’ve needed. Just a – ‘Hi, how are you? Are you happy? Are you okay?’ That would’ve been enough but you didn’t even do that. You didn’t even tell me when you were shot in the throat and lost your voice! But no, no. I was wrong and you were right, so – what, I wasn’t worth talking to? You don’t like me spending time with Rod because it makes you realise how bad a brother you’ve really been. Ever since you showed up on my doorstep with no voice and obvious PTSD, I’ve been trying to meet you halfway but you don’t seem to want to. Not with _me_, anyway.”).

Needless to say, everyone – including Sheppard – gives McKay a wide berth for the rest of the day. He finds himself playing _Moonlight Sonata_ – a bit pedestrian, painfully simple, but hey, if it ain’t broke – and loses himself in the flow, until –

“The bedwetting is back, isn’t it?”

McKay’s fingers slip and the chord he strikes is shuddering and discordant, a violent end to what should have been a graceful melody. He grimaces and leans his arms against the piano, breathing hard.

Rod moves behind him. “Mm, thought so,” he says. This situation might not be profound, but it sure as fuck is trippy. “The piano always helped me feel like I had a bit of control. You too, I guess? Don’t be ashamed. You’ve got PTSD, depression, anyone can see it.”

No fucking shit! Why didn’t anyone tell McKay?

“You seriously don’t know any proper sign language?” Rod pries. “It’ll make communication a lot easier. I’m kind of guessing, here. Which, granted, is probably easier for me than it would be for other people. It’s not every day you meet another version of yourself, after all, but you’ve been kind of avoiding me. I’m trying not to take it personally. Look, you must know more than a few sentences.”

McKay tilts his head, then holds up a finger.

“Something to say?” Rod says.

McKay nods. Then he turns his hand over and lifts his middle finger instead.

“Oh, charming.”

McKay drops his hands back to the piano, not playing, only running his fingers along the cold keys.

“You’re good, you know,” Rod says. “Could improve your technique, though, actually. You’re dropping your left wrist.”

He talks too much. Seriously, does Rod have any idea _how much_ he talks? Is he trying to make up for the six months McKay has gone without being able to speak in a single week? That too-intimate babble, a symptom of nervousness, unable to tolerate the silence so he fills it with whatever’s on his mind but maybe also because he likes the sound of his own voice and needs to hear himself think out loud because how else can he work things out? That’s just who he is, he needs to talk, he needs to vent everything in his mind and now the world is slow and clumsy and he can’t even keep up with himself –

Fuck. _Fuck_.

“Look,” Rod continues, rocking on his heels with his hands in his pockets, “about Jeannie. She’s just upset and it’s not like you’ve given her much of a chance to understand. You should let her know, you know. That you’re having a hard time of things. She wants to be there for you, to – to understand what you’re going through.”

McKay doesn’t want Jeannie to understand, he wants to be _better_ and go back to _normal_ so he can go back to doing his work, so he can become CSO again and see Sheppard relax and smile around him again, so he can go out on field missions, so he can stop being afraid of sleeping and afraid of feeling and afraid of existing, so he can stop being so fucking _pathetic_.

“She’s learning ASL for you. She’s pretty good now, actually.”

Seems like everyone _but _McKay knows ASL these days.

Rod doesn’t take the “leave me alone” hint. He keeps hovering over McKay’s hunched shoulders. “Look, I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like for you,” he says. “I mean, you’re _mute_. I’ve never even considered a life where I can’t talk. I always figured that if I was going to lose something, it’d be my eyesight from staring at computer screens all day, or maybe a – a finger from touching the wrong Ancient device. How have you _not _gone insane by now? My voice is the third most important thing to me. I don’t think I’ve ever been quiet for more than, like, an hour at a time. I’m sorry if my presence is painful for you, or a – a reminder of what you’ve lost, but –”

McKay finds himself on his feet, rounding on Rod while he rambles, and his fists clench the lapels of Rod’s leather jacket to shove him back, hard against the wall. Rod’s eyes widen – fear? He thinks McKay’s going to hit him? McKay _does _want to hit him, he’s sure Heightmeyer will have a fucking field-day with _that _– and Rod grunts when his back collides with the wall, and when he mutters, “Rodney,” in their voice, their name in their voice, it cracks something deep in McKay's chest and instead he drives forward to press his mouth hard against Rod’s.

It’s less a kiss and more of a violent demand, as though McKay is trying to drink back his own voice from the throat of an imposter. Rod is still, stunned, for all of three seconds, then his hands come up and grasp McKay, tugging him closer, and his lips meet like for like. Rod’s mouth is equally bruising and it’s strange, so incredibly _strange_ to feel the shape of his own chapped lips moving against his. It’s not the rhythm McKay expected because there is no give and take, there is only him against himself; the unstoppable force paradox, he thinks suddenly and manically – what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? It’s a paradox because if an unstoppable force exists then it disproves the existence of an immovable object and vice versa and yet here they are and it’s insane, this is insane, he has no idea what he’s doing except for the fact that he knows he needs this.

Rod’s mouth finally shifts sideways, downwards, across McKay’s jawline and then down the side of his neck, Rod’s fingers playing at the high collar of his shirt and tugging it down to trace the hideous scars there with his lips and tongue, the only physical defining feature that sets them apart. McKay pinches Rod’s side hard, the muscle under his ribcage where he knows it’s sensitive, and Rod issues an irritated grunt and chuckle.

“All right, all right,” Rod says, his voice rasping, tight and heavy – _god_, McKay forgotten how his voice sounds when he’s aroused and groans silently against Rod’s collarbone – “What do you want? Black-Scholes, calculus, _pi_ to a hundred decimal places –”

Yes, yes, _all_ of it, he wants to hear all of it in his own voice, he doesn’t care what as long as Rod just _talks_, as long as Rod speaks their language for them both but not here, not against the wall in his piano room. They drag each other through the empty halls, stagger out of the transporter and then finally they’re locked in McKay’s quarters and their pants are around their knees, and Rod’s mouth is tracing equations on his collarbone, down his chest, while his hand is around both their dicks, reciting _pi_ to fifty-two places and counting and McKay silently mouthing along, pretending that it’s his own voice, that he’s speaking, as Rod presses him into the mattress and brings the universe back to him.

* * *

Here’s a question for the ages. Is sleeping with a version of yourself considered:

  1. Incest?
  2. Masturbation?
  3. A paradox?

Gotta be a paradox. Rod had imagined a lot of scenarios upon reaching this universe, and sleeping with, well, himself, wasn’t one of them. But who is he to deny himself of something he needs? After all: there's no point in being someone’s alternate version and stuck in their universe if you can’t make a few things right for yourself. _Suck up_, John’s mocking voice says at the back of his mind. _People-pleaser._ It’s true; Rod doesn’t like not being liked, least of all by his own alternate self, even if McKay doesn’t seem to have a problem with not liking his double. Maybe McKay will like him better after this? Actually, no, that’s an incredibly sad thing to hope for – that his double might _like him better_ now that they’ve slept together.

Psychiatrists call that a “goldmine”.

He leaves McKay sleeping – peacefully, Rod imagines, for the first time in a long time – and faces the day.

“Uh – Rod?” Sheppard – not John, this is Sheppard, important distinction, John is never this tentative or nice or even ever awake this early – says from the adjacent corridor. He’s got a bag of golf clubs slung over his shoulder and his hair does that hilarious surprised thing that must be common to all realities, even looking more startled than usual at bumping into Rod.

“John!” Rod says. “You’re up incredibly early.”

Sheppard’s eyes flick over Rod’s person – noting the clothes (creased, same as yesterday’s), the hair (wet, just showered) and the time and location (7am, McKay’s quarters). If he’s even as half as smart as John, _Rod’s_ John, then he’s worked it out and – yep, the tips of his ears turn pink. “So are you,” Sheppard replies, cautiously. He clears his throat and tries to look anywhere except Rod. “I’m going golfing.” He lifts his golf bag helpfully. “You, uh. You wanna join?”

Rod beams, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’d love that, thank you.”

Which is how he finds himself hitting golf balls into the Lantean ocean. Sheppard issues a low whistle at Rod’s swing. “Nice shot,” he compliments. “Easily 275. You know, I've been meaning to put up, uh, buoy markers, but who has the time, huh?”

Not Sheppard, given it sounds like he’s spent pretty much all his spare time helping Rodney construct his piano. There’s guilt, and then there’s devotion. He wonders how long it’ll take for both of them to work it out.

“This is great,” Rod says. “We don't have one of these where I'm from. Besides, you'd need to take a cattle prod to the Sheppard I know to get him up this early.”

Sheppard smirks and aligns himself to take a swing. “Late nights, partying, huh?”

“If you could call it that. He's, uh, very active with the MENSA club we have there. They have a lot of… um… ‘functions’?”

Sheppard grimaces. “Well, you can't blame a man for his intelligence.”

“No, but I can blame him for reminding me all the time.”

The look on Sheppard’s face is nothing short of priceless. “He _doesn’t_.”

“Mmm. Trust me, my Sheppard makes your Rodney seem, uh… modest, in comparison.”

“Well, I've got to admit, between you and me, you're a lot different than our Rodney, too.”

Sheppard seems to regret that the moment he says it, because there’s only one real key difference between McKay and Rod, and no one wants to talk about it.

“How so?” Rod asks lightly.

“It’s the little things,” Sheppard says, averting his gaze and looking back at the ball. “Uh, you like golf. You say please and thank you. You’re, um…”

“The opposite of condescending?” Rod guesses.

Sheppard swings, and misses. He leans against his golf club with a pained sigh. “He’s not… I mean he _was_. And still is. That won’t change. But since the… the accident, it’s been – it’s been hard to see him like this.”

“It’s been a little strange, seeing – well, myself, like this,” Rod agrees.

Actually, it’s more than strange – it's devastating.

The tips of Sheppard’s ears turn pink again, though Rod is impressed with the sheer attention with which Sheppard pins on the distant horizon. “But not strange enough to, uh…” Sheppard says, as casually as he can, “hold back from certain… _activities _with an alternate universe version of yourself?”

Rod’s sure this universe has something called a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, but those rules don’t exactly apply to 1) Canadians; 2) non-US military personnel; and 3) interdimensional visitors. Rod hides a smile, shrugging nonchalantly. “Well,” he says, “wouldn’t you, given the chance?”

Sheppard frowns as though he’s about to strenuously deny that he’d sleep with an alternate universe version of himself, given the chance, but then seems to reconsider and lifts his eyebrows contemplatively. “Hmm.”

Rod chuckles and leans against the wall, waiting for Sheppard to take another swing at the golf ball.

“So how did it happen?” Rod asks idly, and Sheppard swings and misses again. “The ‘accident’. No one will say which means it must’ve been bad, but I’d like to know, if only for scientific purposes.”

There’s a long, painful silence. “I shot him,” Sheppard says.

“Oh,” Rod says. Things he expected: not that. “Wow. _That_ annoying, is he?”

Sheppard’s brow pinches tightly and he shakes his head. “It was – it was an accident.”

“Hell of an accident, John.”

“Yeah. We were on M1B-129.”

“Haven’t been there.”

“Oh. Well. I guess that’s why you’re –” Sheppard swallows hard and rubs the back of his neck. “Well. Lucky you.”

“John.”

“There was a – a machine,” Sheppard continues, almost desperately – like he wants Rod to understand, to not blame him, to forgive him. “A Wraith mind manipulator. It made us, me, hallucinate, see enemies instead of friends. I didn’t – I wasn’t seeing _Rodney_. I saw... I don’t know if this ever happened to your Sheppard, but in Afghanistan, there was an... incident.”

Rod is familiar. He nods.

“I saw an enemy fighter, and I...”

Ah.

“I shot him right across the throat.” Sheppard’s voice is hoarse. “When Teyla destroyed the machine I came to, and realised what I’d done. I thought for sure I’d come back outside the cave and find McKay’s corpse, but he wasn’t dead. He was choking on his own blood and holding his throat together with his own fucking hands. He flinched back enough for the bullet to miss his carotid arteries, see, but it completely obliterated his voice box. He’ll never speak again, because of me.”

“It’s not your fault, John.”

“It’s absolutely my fault. And there’s nothing I can ever do to make it right, nothing I can ever do to earn his forgiveness –”

“John, please. Of course he’s forgiven you. I doubt he ever blamed you in the first place.”

“He’s never said –”

“Of course he’s never said; he can’t talk.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”

Rod sighs. “Look, he doesn’t _need_ to say it. Even if he could talk. If he hadn’t forgiven you, he’d have single-handedly driven you off Atlantis. You think I don’t know how a McKay holds a grudge? He loves you, and he forgave you a long time ago, if he ever in fact blamed you, which again, I doubt. Why would he need to say what he thinks you already know?”

Sheppard doesn’t answer, because he can’t, because he’s covered his eyes with his hands and he’s trembling with the sheer effort involved in holding everything in.

Rod’s John – MENSA John, who struts his qualifications and stays up late with his maths buddies, who acts like he’s the universe’s gift to itself – doesn’t ‘do’ emotions, such as it were. Oh, sure, he goes on a heroic BSOD every now and then, but he doesn’t cry, he never, _ever_ cries. Like his hair, Rod supposes that’s probably true of all John Sheppards across all universes.

Except, maybe this one does. Or should.

Rod pushes off the wall and gathers Sheppard in his arms. “Hey,” he whispers, his lips against Sheppard’s ears as Sheppard trembles in his grasp. “Hey, it’s okay, c’mere.”

Sheppard goes still. Then he inhales and chokes, and for the first time in god knows how long, lets himself feel.

So that’s one down; two to go.

* * *

It’s a few hours later when Jeannie tracks Rod down in the lab.

“Hey. Have, um, have you seen Meredith?” she asks, twisting her hands together.

It’s one thing for Sheppard to have worked out what Rod and McKay were up to last night. Rod doesn’t think either of them will recover if _Jeannie _finds out. Rod clears this throat and turns back to his laptop. “He’s still sleeping, I think.”

“Long night at the piano?” Jeannie guesses, managing to sound both curious and bitter at the same time.

Something like that. “You, uh, heard him play yet?”

“No,” Jeannie says, hiding her disappointment badly. “He made it quite clear my interest in his extracurricular activities wasn’t welcome.”

“Hmm. Shame. My Jeannie always loved it when I played. I quit when my teacher told me I had no feel for the music, but… sometimes when I visit her and the kids, I knock out a tune or two. She likes it far more now that she doesn’t need earmuffs to block out our parents’ screams.”

Jeannie blinks. She jerks back a little, as though struggling to process what Rod has just dropped on her like a bag of bricks. “I’m – sorry?”

“Our parents,” Rod elaborates. “From what I gathered from Rodney, yours were pretty similar to mine. Screaming at each other, blaming… well, me and Rodney for ruining their lives. You were only three or four and the noise made you cry. The only thing that calmed you was Beethoven’s _Moonlight Sonata_. Bit of a cliché, but, hey, if it ain’t broke. It wasn’t always enough to drown out the screams, so I made my Jeannie wear earmuffs.”

He watches her absorb this, old, forgotten memories stirring. “…I…” she whispers, sinking into the chair beside Rod. “I didn’t remember that part at all. I remember the earmuffs, but I…”

Rod reaches for her hand. “Jeannie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“No – no, thank you.” She blinks at him now with wide, clear eyes, something slotting into place. “For telling me. I… I can’t believe I forgot.”

She smiles at him. He smiles back, and squeezes her hand.

Two down. One to go.

* * *

“What’s this?” Sheppard asks, picking up McKay’s notebook like the nosey bastard he is. It’s opened to the same page it was a few nights ago, the note scrawled hastily during a particularly low moment:

_How To Get Rid Of Rod: A Three-Step Plan by Dr Rodney McKay, PhD PhD_

  1. _Do something clever._
  2. _???_
  3. _Profit._

It was work in progress. McKay snatches it back. Sheppard chuckles and leans against the lab counter as McKay stashes the notebook in a draw and locks it before waking up his laptop.

“I played golf with Rod this morning,” Sheppard says.

Oooh, perfect _Rod_ plays _golf_.

“Caught him, uh – coming out of your room.”

…Oh. Oh, _fuck_. What the hell did Rod say? Is he going around gloating or something? No, surely not, that would be fucked up, even for Rod. It just means Sheppard guessed.

Well. Okay. Fine. Sheppard knows. No point in denying it at this point. McKay isn’t sure why he’s embarrassed. Sure: he had sex with an alternate reality version of himself. He had _good_ sex with an alternate reality version of himself. Is it considered sex when it’s literally with yourself? Incest? Masturbation? The ultimate paradox? He literally went and fucked himself, just like most people over the years have yelled at him to do. Anyway, it wasn’t _personal_. It’s not like there are feelings involved, he’s not in love with himself. Well – maybe he is, in a way? McKay has never been lacking for self-confidence, except when he’s in the throes of a depressive episode, and even _then _it’s because he’s miserable about missing something that makes him Rodney McKay. But no, it wasn’t personal; he knew that, Rod knows that, it was strictly about – about the voice. About… hearing himself again. Being able to imagine, for one night, that he was normal, he was himself, he was whole. And, _anyway,_ it’s not any of Sheppard’s goddamn business. And so what if Sheppard knows? McKay juts his jaw forward and stares at Sheppard as though to demand, _so what?_

Sheppard snorts. “Always knew you were in love with yourself, McKay.” Oh, he is trying way too hard to sound casual. It’s embarrassing. McKay keeps working as Sheppard talks himself into a deeper hole. “Was that supposed to be Part 2 of your plan to drive him off Atlantis? Because if so, I have some constructive criticism.”

McKay rolls his eyes.

“No? Huh. I thought you didn’t like him.”

McKay spent the morning touching up on his atrophying ASL, but _not_ because Rod told him to. He signs: _I don’t_. Then grimaces and adds, _I don’t not like him._

Sheppard struggles to deal with that admission. He turns his head and rubs the back of his neck, jaw clenching. What’s with him today, anyway? Aside from, well, knowing about – that. “Damning with faint praise,” he mutters. “But you’re still worried Jeannie likes him more than you, aren’t you.”

Um, no? No, he does not! That’s not what – well, maybe a _little_, but that’s not – it’s not like that! He and Jeannie drifted apart. It happens. _Obviously_ it wasn’t done maliciously. McKay knows he’s not very good at _personal_ things; he’s petty, arrogant, and bad with people. He’s really bad at saying sorry, or that – or that he’s wrong, possibly because it happens so rarely. So he didn’t call and didn’t write and by the time he realised that three or four years had gone by without so much as a hello-hi-how-are-you by email, it was just – it felt like it had been _too_ long, and it wasn’t like _she_ called or emailed either, but –

Shit. Sheppard’s right. Of course he’s right. Jeannie has every reason to hate McKay and every reason to wish McKay was Rod, the brother she _could_ have had, who smiles and says please and thank you, and is godfather to his niece and nephews, and still has a voice.

Sheppard moves closer and nudges his side, that bit of muscle under his ribcage. “Hey. What are you thinking?”

_You’re right, she hates me_, McKay signs.

“That’s not what I said.”

What does Sheppard want McKay to say? That he’s worried _everyone_ likes Rod more than him? Just when he’d started to resign himself to the idea that people like McKay more as a mute because he can’t be himself, and now there’s this _other Rodney_ walking around who can speak but is _nice?_ It’s enough to make McKay want to vomit with disgust. Rod did him a favour last night but that’s as _far_ as the gratitude goes.

Here’s the great thing about living and working on Atlantis: there’s always a new crisis to turn your attention to, so you don’t have to start thinking about personal things. Is it wrong that McKay is almost grateful for the situation of impending doom? Probably, but it means Sheppard stops talking about him and Rod, and it means McKay stops thinking about how Jeannie likes Rod better than she likes her real brother, and it stops all of them from having inconvenient emotions when push comes to shove.

Downside: they’re going to have to send a massive burst of energy through the Bridge in order to save Atlantis and the entire universe from being deleted out of existence, and Elizabeth is Not Happy, Jan.

“Rodney, talk to you for a second?” Rod asks, before they’re ready to power up.

Hmm. Funny. McKay puts down his tablet and lets Rod lead him to a more private area of the lab.

“Look, the _Daedalus_ is still in orbit. I thought, uh...”

McKay knows what he thought. It occurred to him as well. _I know_, he signs.

“Oh, good, you’ve been practicing,” Rod says, pleased. What an unattractive look on a McKay. Ugh. Suck-up. “Look, if I can beam into the… energy stream, protected by my personal force field…”

Yes, yes, he’d be transported back to his own universe, but McKay didn’t bring it up before because if it doesn’t work – well. He’d wanted Rod off Atlantis but he doesn’t want him _dead_.

“I’m willing to take the risk,” Rod says, seeing McKay’s expression. “I’ve already requested the _Daedalus_ to execute the transport to the coordinates inside the chamber on your mark. That is, if you're willing to do this.”

_Everyone loves you here, _McKay signs.

“Except you.”

_I don’t not like you._

“Well, that’s something, I guess. Look, I like it here too, but it’s not home. My Sheppard is a know-it-all, my Teyla is hard to talk to, and my Ronon is… well, actually, those two are pretty similar. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, for all their faults, they're my team! My place is with them. Besides, they're not looking for another McKay around here.” He nudges McKay. “They already have one.”

His throat is tight and for a moment it’s like he can’t breathe again, like he’s choking on his own blood only this time it’s more grief. McKay holds his fists horizontally, side by side, and twists his wrists like he’s snapping a stick in half.

“No,” Rod says, grasping McKay’s shoulder. “You’re not broken. Look, I envy you. Even though you can’t talk, you still find a way to say exactly what's on your mind, no matter how it makes you look. I can only imagine the freedom you must have, not caring if people like you or not.”

McKay blinks.

Rod claps his shoulder with a broad grin. “Trust me, you've got it great here. Now, I've made some calculations. When the readings reach the levels I've indicated, you'll know whether or not I made it home.” He turns – then turns back, and lowers his voice. “Oh, and, um, look, before I go, I wanted to give you something.” Rod produces a USB stick from the chest pocket of his leather jacket, and presses it into McKay’s palm. “I know myself. You’re way too proud to ask because I would’ve been too, so I’ll spare you the humiliation. I saw the blueprints in the lab. I made a few suggestions, couple of tweaks –” of course he did, “– don’t roll your eyes, you’ll thank me one day, and, well, maybe in a few years with the right technological discoveries, it’ll work. This is a, uh, a general-purpose sample that will save you from your painstaking archiving project.”

McKay stares at the USB in his hand for a long time. He doesn’t mean to yank Rod into a hug, like, _at all_, that would be stupid and humiliating and he just knows everyone in the lab is staring at him but he does it anyway, his eyes burning and his throat tight, then he pulls back faster than it had happened and dries his cheeks and flaps his impatiently hands at Rod to tell him to piss off back home.

“All right, all right,” Rod chuckles, and steps into position. He winks at McKay and says, “Three down.”

Yeah, McKay thinks, watching Rod beam away, whatever that means.

After they’ve saved the universe and drained the ZPM to zero, Sheppard sidles up alongside McKay. “What did he give you?” he asks.

McKay knows his eyes are bright when he turns his gaze to Sheppard. He taps his scarred throat, and smiles.

* * *

So Elizabeth isn’t too happy about the whole ‘killing the ZPM’ thing, but in the grand scheme of things they did prevent the destruction of not one but two universes, so, not fired. Oddly, though, he thinks if this was the way his time on Atlantis was to come to an end, he’d be – not _okay_ with it, he’d probably be miserable for the rest of his life, but there’s something uplifting about the fact that it would’ve been his science, not his handicap, that forced him off his home amongst the stars.

What he _wants_ to do, straight away, is take the voice that Rod has gifted him and upload it to the program he’d been working on a few months ago then stopped because he couldn’t stand going through his old recordings. His project will take years before it's even remotely ready to be tested and trialled, but now that he has a sample of _his voice_, well - he has something like hope for it, now. What he _actually_ does is go to see Jeannie off, because no matter what words passed between them (okay, whatever words passed from her to him because it’s not like he was able to get a word in edgeways during the rant to end all rants) she’s still his sister. She’s with Sheppard, who’s collecting a laptop from her and wrapping up whatever stories he’s been telling about McKay. As Sheppard passes him he lowers his voice, his hand brushing McKay’s. “Hey, um. I’ll find you later, okay? Something I wanna talk to you about.”

Jeannie doesn’t notice. They share some awkward words (well, she speaks; McKay gestures badly with his work-in-progress ASL, and hey, Rod had been right, she _is_ learning ASL for him) and McKay hands her a statue he’d swiped from Elizabeth’s desk with a note: _For Madison_.

“Well, it’s the thought that counts, I guess.” Jeannie smiles stiffly and packs it. “I’d say ‘see you around’, but...”

Yeah.

She shifts. He shifts. They don’t make eye contact, but she finally blurts out, “I mean... look. You’ll visit at Christmas, right? We’ve got a piano. Not a grand, it’s only upright, and I always thought it would be nice for Madison to learn one day. _Moonlight Sonata_ was my favourite when I was her age. It’ll be nice to hear it without... mum and dad in the background.”

…She remembers. After all that – she does remember, after all. And oh, this is that – meeting him halfway thing she talked about. Right? It has to be. He tugs Jeannie into a hug and she freezes for a second before hugging him back. When he pulls back, he signs: _How are you? You happy? You okay?_

Jeannie grins back her tears. “Yeah, Mer,” she says, reaching for his hands, twining her fingers through his. “I am. I really am.”

* * *

“Hoping we could have that talk now.”

_Funny_, McKay signs, and Sheppard’s serious expression cracks enough for his shoulders to relax into a slouch as he huffs a laugh. He doesn't wait for McKay to invite him to sit beside him at the piano; he slides in next to him, eyes on McKay's hands on the keys. 

“I miss your voice,” Sheppard says quietly, after a long time. “I... _really _miss hearing your voice. Hearing Rod made me realise just how much. He wasn’t the same. Close but – he wasn’t you, it wasn’t the same. I know you don’t blame me but I don’t have enough words to make up for what I took from you. It’s fucked up, that it took this for me to realise that I wanted to talk with you about, uh, stuff, only now you can’t talk back.”

...Yeah, well, even if he could talk back, McKay's not sure even _he_ could form the words necessary to reply. He leans and meets Sheppard’s lips with his - not a true kiss, just a caress, but with the promise of something more. 

“Rodney,” Sheppard murmurs against his mouth.

McKay pulls back, his ears burning. _Any requests?_ he signs.

“Your favourite,” Sheppard immediately replies, and turns his head to McKay's shoulder. “Let me hear you.”

Rodney begins to play.

* * *

_Sonata form, also known as sonata-allegro form, is an organisational structure based on contrasting musical ideas. It consists of three main sections – exposition, development, and recapitulation – and sometimes includes an optional coda at the end. In the exposition, the main melodic ideas, or themes, are introduced. In the development section, these themes are explored and dramatised. The recapitulation brings back and resolves the two original themes by placing them both in the tonic key, which is the main tonal centre of the piece and almost always the key in which the piece begins and ends. Often, the tonic key is indicated by the title of the work._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue: It's 2015 and Sheppard sends McKay the Buzzfeed opinion poll "Would You Fuck A Clone Of Yourself?".

**Author's Note:**

> define: tacet  
/ˈtasɪt,ˈteɪsɪt/  
_adverb_: (as a direction) with the voice or instrument silent.  
e.g. "the concert finishes with the piano playing tacet before doom arrives"


End file.
